We took a Dragon Air Boeing 767 plane from HongKong to Hiroshima International Airport. Both were first-time experiences: departure from the New HongKong Airport in Chek Lap Kok, and arrival at Hiroshima Airport. It was hot and cloudy in HongKong as well as humid. That is the very worst combination of aversive weather conditions for me, ugh! I had the naive expectation of escaping this dreadful hot weather just for one week. I did not realise that I had been so naive until we moved on to the Miyazaki Prefecture on the third day of our trip. It was 29 degrees Celsius when the plane landed on the runway of Hiroshima Airport. Indeed a few degrees cooler than home, but not significant enough for sure to be considered a cool day.

Kent (a Mr Lau) had booked a nice coach well in advance for the entire tour. He was our tour guide, a guy from HongKong having an exceptional command of Japanese. We loaded our luggage into the compartment and off we headed for downtown Hiroshima.

Our first stop was the Peace Memorial Museum which was erected to commemorate the complete devastation of the city by an atomic-bomb on 6th August 1945. That was the very first nuclear holocaust in the history of mankind, which was to be followed by an even worse attack on Nagasaki a few days later on 9th August 1945. These two explosions vividly reflected the wages of the evil of invasion paid by innocent civilians. How sad!
Click on the picture below for more information:

Immediately next to the Peace Memorial Museum lies the Peace Park where you can find thousands of small colourful paper cranes (origami cranes or "thousand-feather" cranes) piled beside a bizarre statue. According to the Japanese it is believed that making 1,000 such paper cranes will help to bring good luck or something like that. By the way (and quite curiously), there is a saying that the variant of this figure in HongKong is 3,000.

Just beyond the boundaries of the Peace Park rest the remnants of a building which was irreparably damaged by the A-bomb. This building is characterised by a dome-shaped top as shown in the photo on the left. In spite of the rebuilding of the entire city the remnants of this building were deliberately kept to remind the people - both in Japan and worldwide - of the agonies and the sorrows of war. The explosion generated (a) a powerful blast, (b) scouring heat rays and (c) initial and residual radiation, all of which combined to claim the lives of some 140,000 civilians by the end of 1945.
For those who happen to be curious, the dome building before the catastrophe used to be the Hiroshima Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall. I have also included two video clips in RealVideo (RM) format of the Peace Memorial Fire and the Atomic-bomb Dome.

After decades, Hiroshima prospers. We had a good afternoon shopping in the famous Hondori Street Shopping Mall. I went to a dimly lit curio shop only to discover something which I had been wanting for ages. The first item was a bamboo wind chime producing a mellow timbre unmatched by all metallic wind chimes I have ever listened to - mesmerizing and soothing to the soul. The second item was a plastic decoration unit made with six concentric elliptical rings. These colourful rings had been arranged exactly into the rainbow colours - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple - with the red one at the outermost. How could I help regretting badly if I were to miss something like these?
Bamboo Wind Chime Rainbow Rings

After having been loaded with 2 hours of shopping it was already around 6pm and we moved on for Japanese cuisine. We had rice with half-scrambled eggs and chicken with an additional bowl of udon (a very thick Japanese noodle of some quarter of an inch in diameter). That was quite a lot for me considering my diminished stomach capacity after a series of diet programs! The way they do the smooth, half-scrambled eggs is, I suppose, imimitable elsewhere.

Stuffed with gorgeous food we got in the coach which took us to the Hiroshima Prince Hotel. Located at the centre of the spacious lobby was a vast pool with a fountain. When the fountain closes the surface of the pool is exactly like a giant mirror - indeed flatter than any mirror.

Since we are used to going to bed at very late hours Raymond and I went out for a walk. We were delighted by the many drink vending machines. The variety and flavour of tinned &/or bottled drinks offered in Japan by far exceed those in HongKong. We wanted to try as many as possible. Altogether we shared 4 tins from four machines! We returned to the hotel. Still not too sleepy we went to the arcade games & bowling centre annexed to the hotel. "Sorry, we're closed!" Off to bed we went.

Early in the next morning (12th July 1999) was a breakfast buffet followed by more than two hours of journey. The coach sped past the Hiroshima Prefecture as we crossed the Hiroshima-Yamaguchi Prefectural Boundary and stopped at a motorway service station near Shimonoseki, a small town near the tip of Yamaguchi Prefecture. We had lunch there. Each of us had a generous portion of pork cutlet.

After a whole afternoon of shopping in Fukuoka on 16th July 1999, our round tour of Kyushu was completed and we headed back for Hiroshima. That was quite a rush. On our way I was so tired I slept most of the journey and missed the second chance to see Kanmon Bridge. We stopped at another motorway service station where we had brief dinner followed by the remaining journey, again to the Hiroshima Prince Hotel where we stayed for the final night of our tour. Early in the morning of 17th July 1999 we had breakfast hastily. "Dragon Air always fly on schedule. They never wait for a late passenger!" Said Kent our tour guide. Hiroshima Airport was the last stop of the tour.