My journey begins on a Thursday. My friend James and I hop on a train; he’s heading for Kyoto, at which point we’ll split ways and I’ll continue on down the line. Even riding the Hikari Super Express for most of the way, this would be a four hour trip, travelling a large length of Honshu island. Time passed, I waved bye to James at Kyoto and watched the five pagodas of Toji temple there rising above the buildings as the shinkansen gathered speed. Then Kyoto was behind us and Japan began to fly past outside. In Okayama I switched trains and got on another Super Express—this one was not stopping until it reached Hiroshima. This was the final leg of the journey to the city itself. Strangely, as I drew closer I began to feel a slight restlessness, almost like nervousness. I had wanted to come here for so long, to see this place, and now I was finally drawing near for the first time. When the recording announced that we would be arriving at Hiroshima station in a few minutes my teeth actually began to itch for some reason. Then the city was passing by on both sides and I was staring wide eyed out the window to see what I could see. From the vantage point of the train windows I saw mostly another city, albeit with this one filled with more green than any other I’d been to so far; many tree-rich hills rose out of the earth, the houses and buildings built around them, rather than over them, of course. Many cities in Japan should be marveled at sometimes, for the fact that a great number of them, especially major ones, were bombed into decimated ruins during World War II, but have come back in spreading metropolitan full force. Hiroshima is special though of course, along with Nagasaki on Kyushu island, and looking out the window, watching the city fly by as we headed deeper towards its central station, I knew that I was looking at a place once incinerated by an atomic bomb.
