Hiroshima - A City Rebuilt

Our train pulled into Hiroshima Saturday morning and we made our way to our hostel, hoping to check-in 8 hours ahead of schedule. To our surprise, not only could we leave our luggage there but our room was empty the night before so we got to check-in, clean-up, and set-up for the day before heading out again around 10am. The first place we visited was a local shopping district/mall to take a look. The stores over here are usually pretty small and sell lots of items, there isn't much free space with big aisles and such. After eating lunch at McDonalds, we headed back to the A-Bomb Dome, Peace Memorial Park, and the museum. We spent a few hours taking pictures and making our way through these sights. I marvelled at the before and after pictures of the city and from the air. It went from buildings and vertical forms to looking like fields with roads/ditches between them. The museum was good until it got all into the peace, anti-nuclear thing. I read all the stuff about Hiroshima's history and really enjoyed that. It was a military town to some degree and played big roles when Japan fought its neighbors to the west. There were very few things that survivied the blast, but one was a tree which has been named the "A-Bombed Tree." The thing that impressed me most was how the Japanese have rebuilt the city and moved on. They had the trolley lines running three days after the blast and have been moving forward ever since.