Hiroshima/Nagasaki trip Start!

Hey guys!

Soo a lot has happened since my last post! Yesterday I left Chiba and went to Tokyo station, where I had some lunch. I went to subway (eat fresh)! You can tell the food is fresh because… well they grow the vegetables inside the restaurant:

Anyways then I went on the Shinkansen (or bullet train – these fast trains connect most of Japan together under the JR or Japan rail system) to Kyoto.

In kyoto I met the head of a Buddhist organization for dinner (more on that later this month) before meeting up with my Canadian correspondent for the Hiroshima/Nagasaki trip. Unfortunately, the American students were held up at the airport because there was a suicide on the train line. The whole line was put to a halt for a couple hours as the police and JR line figured things out (suicides are fairly common in Japan with 33,000 reported every year and likely many more not).

The other 2 Canadian representatives and I decided to head to the Ritsumeikan dormitory before the American group arrived. We met student coordinators Wash and Mao (I got to know these Ritsumeikan students a little bit- they’re really cool!) and got into our rooms… The American University students arrived shortly after midnight- many of them had not been to Japan before so now they always come to me for help with various things related to Japan.

In the morning we went off to orientation. We got a brief outline of what this trip is about and also got to listen to everybody introduce themselves. This tour has an amazing combination of students- we’re divided into small groups for travel purposes called our ‘peace families’ . Let me introduce you to my peace family (from left to right):

Hiroko is our first local guide who is a Ristumeikan student from

Hiroshima studying business administration. Her great grandfather was working in a factory in downtown Hiroshima 65 years ago this Wednesday when the first nuclear bomb was dropped. Her grandfather was doing military training in a nearby prefecture and went to look for him the next day. However, his grandfather found neither his father nor any kind of remains.

Mei was born in New York, but moved to Osaka when she was only a baby. Now is an international relations major student at Ristumeikan University and she is our second local who will be our guide.

John is a History major student at AU (American university in Washington, DC). Before beginning studies there, he served with the US armed forces. He spent a year in Iraq, where he was an infantry soldier.

Linda is a phd student at Organ State University (History of Science) who walked 3200 miles across America in 1986 (took 9.5 months) in a march called the “great peace march for global nuclear disbarment”. She is very active in peace movements today.

Li is one of the three people on this trip from China. Currently, she is attending Asia Pacific University, where she studies business administration.

Then there’s me. I’m really excited to be getting to know this group more and more! Afterwards, we went for lunch in the university cafeteria then went to the Kyoto Museum for World Peace at the Ristumeikan University. I was impressed at the comprehensive covering that this university provided of the events in the last century. It seemed to me much different than a war museum or a memorial as instead of glorifying war or serving as a memorial, it encouraged viewers to move towards peace given the events that happened. It was very direct and explicit in stating some of the things that Japan did during the second world war (I was a little bit surprised at how direct some of these things were, such as descriptions of how militarism effected the way the school system functioned).

We went to two seminars in the afternoon. One was with a WWII veteran who was part of the Japanese army while the other was with koko kondo, who will be continuing the tour with us. This hibakusha (or a-bomb survivor) gave her testimony of being affected by the blast as well as her experiences with the ABCC (Atomic Bomb casualty commission) which conducted research on hibakusha. She went to the same school as Sadoko (who tried to fold 1000 cranes in the children’s storybook before she died of leukemia from radiation exposure) and described how her opinion on the crew of Enola Gay (the plane that dropped the bomb) has changed from hatred to sorrow.

We had a kick-off dinner before retiring to our rooms. (right now im borrowing internet from someone.. not sure when I can blog next!)

For discussion today, we will be continuing with part II of the series where you can post questions for local people. If anyone has any questions they would like to ask a local ristumeikan university student, please post them below. I will check the comments while I post my next blog so that 2 blog posts from now, I will answer your questions with their answers.

Also today’s draw winner is PAX from Vancouver. You`ll be contacted soon about your prize! I will also post details about NHK and the television showings (our trip specifically will be aired internationally). Also it looks like Yumiuri Shimbum, a japanese newspaper, will do a piece on our trip (the biggest newspaper in the world by circulation).