Last days in Japan

Yesterday Matt and I were both in agreement that we took the most beautiful train ride of our life. We left Osaka for the village in the mountains known as Takayama. The train ride was incredible. We rode beside the most beautiful, rushing, and deep aqua blue river. It was calm one moment and the next it was swirling and crashing over slate gray rocks, then slipping over waterfalls and rising and falling into huge swollen gorges. Seeing it against the vibrant greens of the bamboo trees, the deep evergreens and the snow capped mountains is something that will stay with me forever. It was so beautiful it literally brought me to tears. It is most comforting to know that we still have the ride back where we will see it all again. I am going to soak in every second of it and hopefully burn a vivid image of it into my brain forever!
But the day before that fabulous train ride we took a day trip to a more somber place - Hiroshima. As most people know it was the site where the first atomic bomb was dropped in war and we saw the devastation that occurred from it up close.
When you first arrive at the site you see one lone building left standing after the rest of Hiroshima was annihilated. It is quite something to see and we took many shots of it including the one shown here.
Next was a memorial to all the children killed in Hiroshima. Some of you may have heard the story of a young girl named Sadako Sasaki who contracted leukemia from radiation sickness. She undertook the task of folding one thousand paper cranes, as there is a Japanese legend that if you manage this feat, you receive one wish - her's was to become healthy again. Unfortunately, she only completed 644, and her friends finished the task to bury 1,000 cranes with her. Now, her memory lives on in the hundreds of thousands of cranes that are left by school children and others that share a wish for peace and the abolition of nuclear arms. It is a very touching site and certainly one that tugs at the heart strings.
What was also quite lovely is while looking at the memorial we were approached by an old man who could speak a little English. He asked Matt and I if we would please walk with him across the site to see another memorial. We were very curious and of course did. He did not talk much but from the few questions I asked, we learned that he was born in Hiroshima, and lost both his father and grandparents to the A-bomb. He was 75 he told us, and then he lead us to a memorial to the Koreans who died while in Hiroshima. It turns out 10% of those killed were Korean (mostly forced labourers), as was this old little man. He asked us to please take a picture, then thanked us for coming, then slowly turned around and walked away. What a wonderful moment that was.
Our last stops included another site dedicated to all those killed that they were able to identify through records. Here we saw graphic pictures and heard accounts of relatives who after the bomb, rushed to the centre of what was left of the city to try to find loved ones. Their accounts were horrific. Some even put their pain into paintings of what they saw: people walking around naked, with their clothes burnt off and their skin sliding off of their arms and fingers, people jumping into lakes and wells to cool off not realizing that the heat of the bomb had swelled the temperatures of the water to boiling points. It was just horrible.
Our last stop was the museum, which was just so informative and also very adamant in its wish for the world to get rid of every nuclear weapon. It truly was such an amazing experience and one that everyone should take up if they ever get the chance.
So now, our days are numbered as Takayama is our last stop! After that we are homeward bound. Time is flying, but I am going to soak in every second.

Lots of hugs!
xxoo
Vee