one lone crane

Posted on October 6, 2008 Updated on June 8, 2013

Okonomiyaki is a Hiroshima speciality!  We ate okonomiyaki on bar stools around a big hot plate. It wasn’t quite teppanyaki where the chef threw it to us to catch, but it was cooked right in front of us and served to us on a plate.

Growing up, we all would’ve read or at least knew about “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes”. Hiroshima is nothing like anywhere we have ever been. There is obviously a lot of “new” since the rebuild after the devastation caused by the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. But with all that “new”, there is also so much history.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is a very moving place, dedicated to the victims but also advocating world peace. We visited the museum which was interesting to start off with but soon became too overwhelming when we reached the stories and items belonging to victims (who were mainly children). It was simply too emotional and gut-wrenching to read and look at the exhibits so we left early. It is incomprehensible what the Japanese people in this city and in Nagasaki would have experienced on the day the bombs were dropped. It reinforces how no one really wins when it comes to war!

We visited the A-Bomb Dome which amazingly remained in-shape despite the bomb detonating 600 metres above it. And we were fortunate to witness one lone crane perched above it as we walked past. It seemed so fitting to be be able to see a crane in such a place.Within the memorial park, there is a statue of Sadako with the paper crane representing Children’s Peace Monument. And to this day, you can still fold paper cranes and send the 1000 cranes to be displayed near the statue.