Hiroshima - those aren't pillows!

DAN

It's been two days, but a lot has happened.

For the last two nights we have been staying at the peace camp on the sports grounds of Hiroshima university. This was a bit of a scary proposition at first. I've never been to a peace camp before and I didn't know if bringing Flo and Emma there would be a good idea. Imagine a 'peace camp' at a university in Britain. It could easily be pretty annoying, right? In Hiroshima peace is such a meaningful word for people and their passion and earnestness for peace flows into everything. The whole thing was quite lovely.

In order to get to Hiroshima we had to take our first (and longest) train journey, starting in Tokyo. The journey is about 600 miles. Thankfully the hardest bit of the journey was navigating through Tokyo station. There are so many types of trains departing from Tokyo going in all directions. There are at least 5 different types of terminal for departures and if you haven't taken the train in Japan before it can be incredibly confusing. To make matters worse it's the crowded summer holiday period, so the train station was like a giant moving Where's Wally picture. Finding our way through that was a little stressful, but the time honoured combination of running, shouting and waving our hands frantically got us through it. Brits abroad! We used the shinkansen bullet train, which at a speed of about 200 mph got us to the destination in an incredible 3 hours.

Throughout the day we had to ask for help and directions from loads of people. Not one person told us to fuck off, it was amazing. The Japan rail pass is really good too. It's like a secret agent pass that you can flash at any of the train barriers and the guards (with comically big hats) just let you through.

Once we were actually in Hiroshima we realised that the peace camp was in the middle of nowhere, at a university campus outside town. We had to take a train service and a local bus to get there. Getting the bus was quite scary, because none of the locations were in English and we had to take a guess on which was the right number. We jumped on one and I followed our progress on Google maps until we went into a massive underground tunnel. Luckily it was the right bus and we got off near the university.

Simple directions to the peace camp

A helpful businessman walked us through the university grounds, through campus buildings (that reminded me of locations in Resident Evil) and up three flights of stairs to the camp. He must have gone 15 minutes out of his way up a steep hill just to show us where to go.

Sunset on the way to the peace camp

The peace camp was really well organised, our tent was already up and they gave us a load of sleeping bags. We got such a warm welcome that it felt like we'd finally get a good night's rest... It was also really fun to be staying at a Japanese university campus that was deserted over the summer holidays. If you've ever seen a university in a Japanese film or anime, it was exactly like that.

Hiroshima University Campus

The one thing we didn't get were pillows, so we had to make do with rolled up jumpers. Trying to sleep in a tent in 35 degree heat on rock hard ground with only a rolled up jumper for a pillow was pretty tough. At one point I woke up in the middle of the night with muscle spasms in my neck. I was worried about being at the peace ceremony the next day with my head only pointing in one direction, so I rolled my head around until the cracking sounds stopped and it seemed to do the trick.

Hiroshima is a really weird place to visit. When you first get off the train here it looks like it could be any other Japanese city. Then you remember that a nuclear weapon was dropped on it. It's so strange to stand in a crowded city square that seems as alive as (maybe more alive) any other place and realise what actually happened here.

People in Hiroshima are so friendly and open that it's quite frankly astonishing. Throughout our stay here I've had conversations with lots of the locals and it's so weird to hear that someone you're talking to had an atomic bomb dropped on them. The number one thing that everyone seems to think is that it's no good to hold on to grudges and that peace is the only solution. It's really inspiring.

Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park

The second day in Hiroshima was unlike any day I have ever had. We were up at 5.30 to take a bus into town for the peace ceremony. After the rough night's sleep we were exhausted, but the anticipation electrified everyone and there was a great energy. Poor Flo was still jet lagged and we had to practically carry her to the bus. She looked like she was so tired that it hurt.

Once we got off the bus we were in a complete throng of people. There were crowds of people who came to attend the 70th anniversity memorial ceremony streaming past dozens of protest groups. The protests were against Japan's President Abe who had come to speak at the ceremony, but has made some controversial plans recently regarding the re-militarisation of Japan. It was like a scene out of Akira (but without the violence).

We got pretty good seats at the peace ceremony. People from all over the world had come to participate. In front of us were a group from the Peace Museum of Tehran (really a thing!) I was sitting next to a ballet dancer from Finland who had flown to Japan especially to be at there as an envoy for his arts organisation. The only problem was that the seats we had were in the blazing sun, so we were doing everything we could to hide from it. Everyone was dripping with sweat and passing round drinks of pocari sweat to deal with the dehydration.

At 8.15 the bell tolled to commemorate exactly 70 years since the atomic bomb was dropped on this place. Doves were released and an orchestra of local children sang. It was one of the only 'solemn' ceremonies that I've ever seen which I felt absolutely no cynicism about. There was no bullshit politics, no nationalism, it was purely a desire for the world to be less crappy than it is and an outpouring of emotion for those that had died.

In many ways the idea that you're standing in a place where over 80,000 people were killed in an instant by an atomic weapon never sinks in completely. We attended a talk by survivors who were giving their testimony for the first time in English and while it was sometimes (almost comically) difficult to make out what they were saying, their tears said it all. Some had their whole families disappear, the remains were never found. We also attended a workshop constructing origami cranes, which are part of a very sad story and a very important part of remembrance in Hiroshima.

While Emma and Flo were folding cranes I got into a conversation with a lady whose family came from the next town along. Her father had volunteered to help the survivors of the bomb and apparently his experiences were so bad that he didn't speak about what he had seen for 30 years. She didn't even know that he had been involved in the rescue effort until he broke down one day and started telling her son about it. This lady was just a random person that I bumped into at the event, but it made me realise how many people there had a story about how they had been affected. The day was full of these kinds of moments.

Tasteful depiction of bomb victims at the museum

Toward the end of the day we skipped through the horribly crowded museum and had a really excellent tour given by a little old lady who was 2 at the time of the bombing. She had a twinkle in her eye and she ran around central Hiroshima peace park tugging at our sleeves and pointing at surviving structures and memorials to the victims.  We even donned hard hats and went into the basement of a building about 100m from the hypocenter in which one employee out of thirty seven survived because he was luckily at the very bottom when the bomb went off. She was the best, just like a granny from a Ghibli movie. I think she was my favourite person of the whole trip so far.

The water symbol is the emblem of Hiroshima

A huge cicada landed on my t-shirt which was like like the cherry on top of an already brilliant day. I'd been hearing them the whole time that we'd been in Japan and I finally got to meet one. We finished the day by watching the floating lantern ceremony which was the perfect ending, with thousands of coloured lanterns floating down the river to commemorate the dead.

Lanterns travel down the river and Emma's nose is missing

I'm sorry everyone for the long blog post and uncharacteristic sincerity, but it was one of the most inspirational days that I've had in my life.