Today was my birthday - and what an amazing day it was.
Yesterday, Fukuda-sensei and his family and I took the shinkansen to Hiroshima. I have long wanted to make the trip, but have never managed it from Hokkaido. We arrived to relatively cool weather - we checked into the hotel and headed back to the station to eat okonomiyaki, Hiroshimal style. His boys came back to check out my room afterwards in the hotel.
In the morning, we took off at 6:30 am or so for Miyamina - what a beautiful place. We arrived at low tide and clambered about in the mud flats beneath the red tori before going through the shrine itself. Everyone was hungry - but everything was closed until finally finding a small place with every child's favorite - curryrice. On the train back to town I met a young couple from Spain - both biologists and she a junior high school science teacher. It was odd to speak Spanish in the context of a Japanese train!
There are no words to describe the Peace Park and Museum - I was thankful to be with friends but left aching and quiet inside. I wondered what Tetsuya's small boys thought or understood of it all. I wonder what my own students, slightly older, actually think. I bought books of first hand accounts and pictures - horrible, sad - but necessary to help them think about the immensity of the human impact.
We ate lunch - curryrice again for at least one of the boys - and caught the train back north. They go off a Kyoto and I continued to Tokyo - in time to meet Katsuki's dad and brother for a late supper.

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