Visit to Hiroshima was very interesting

Since my last blog, we have had a home stay with a Japanese family and we have traveled to Hiroshima to sightsee and visit another high school. I will blog about my home stay at another time on the Ning site, so I will concentrate this entry on Hiroshima.

Our first day in Hiroshima started with a sightseeing trip to the Miyajima to see the famous Japanese shrine. The shrine is called Itsukushima Shrine. The entrance to the shrine is marked by a famous torii. At low tide, the torii stands in sand, and in high tide the water passes the torii and stands below the shrine. Between the torii, the shrine, and large pagoda building, there was plenty of historic Japanese structures to see.

A few more items that we learned about Miyajima:

* The island is famous in Japan for its maple trees. Several bakeries on the island cook a pastry every day that is shaped like a maple leaf and filled with a sweet center. I sampled one that had a chocolate center and it was very good!

* It is said a monk designed a special wooden spoon to make rice patties. Several tourist stores sold this shape of wooden spoon.

* Deer roam freely on the island and we were warned multiple times to not have paper in our hands or else the deer would come right up to you and try to bite your hand. I have video of the deer taking a bite of a shirt corner from a person in our group.

For lunch we had a Hiroshima delicacy, a okonomiyaki. This Japanese pizza is made of noodles, egg, vegetables and various meats. I chose one with pork, and it wasn't too bad. It was very filling. I will say I prefer my good old American pizza.

A highlight after lunch was our visit with the mayor of Hiroshima, mayor Tadatoshi Akiba. He is MIT educated. He spoke to us about the city of Hiroshima's role in leading a nuclear weapon free world. He is dedicated to the cause of world peace and is committed to being a leader in moving the world toward being nuclear weapon free by 2020.

After our meeting with the mayor we visited the Mazda plant in Hiroshima. This plant is huge! It is several square kilometers in Hiroshima and provides employment for over 30% of the population in Hiroshima. One of the most interesting aspects during this visit was that the two public relations representatives from Mazda were Americans.

Both have backgrounds in the car company and live and work in Japan for Mazda. Further, both seemed to speak Japanese just as easy as they could speak English. A few other pieces of information gathered from the Mazda plant trip:

* It takes 25 hours to build a car from start to finish. We witnessed large robotic arms putting sheets of steel together to form the basic frame of the cars. Also, we saw the end of the line where some of the finishing touches (interior/dashboard/etc.) are installed.

It was very interesting to see two or three different models being assembled on the same line and to see the efficiency of the workers.

* Mazda has a focus of building more fuel-efficient cars. We observed their vehicle that can run on hydrogen or gasoline. They have a few of these vehicles in Japan and another running in Norway.

* China is Mazda's biggest market. They are working hard to expand the distribution system in China to expand in this market.

We concluded our day with dinner at what I would say is a fancy seafood restaurant. The waitresses were all dressed in traditional Japanese robes. The food was served as seven different courses ranging from sushi to raw oysters to oriental beef and salad. I was a good sport and sampled everything. But let's just say I'm craving my backyard barbecue and plan on indulging myself in hamburgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, pizza and any other American/Indiana/Greene County food when I return.

Our day today started by walking through the Hiroshima Peace Park. The park consists of some memorials, a flame of peace, the remains of a bombed building, and the Hiroshima Peace Museum. The park exists to memorialize those citizens that died in the blast and to serve as a symbol for world peace.

After visiting the park, we visited a junior/senior high school in Hiroshima. This trip provided some more information beyond the visit to the school in Tokyo. First, this public school required all students to wear a uniform. Something that I did not mention before is that in Japan, students clean the school at the end of the day. This helps to promote a sense of ownership in the school and prevents unnecessary vandalism and graffiti. This practice is part of the Japanese culture that promotes cleanliness and upkeep of one's property in all facets of life.

We also learned today that schools in Japan have an annual standardized test very similar to the ISTEP in Indiana. In Japan, students are assessed on Japanese, Math, and English. The school we visited today was very proud to show us that their scores were above average for their prefecture (like a state).

We had lunch at the school too. To buy lunch, we had to pick from a menu on a machine to receive our ticket. Once we had our ticket, we lined up and gave the lunch lady our ticket. The color of the ticket identified the lunch we chose. I had curry and rice.

After swinging by the Peace Museum, we are concluding our day by riding the Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Tokyo. It reaches speeds near 200 mph. The landscape is going by very fast, but the ride is very smooth! There are no seatbelts on the train, so I assume there is no danger for a fast stop! We will arrive in Tokyo at 10:13 tonight (I'm typing on my laptop on the train right now).

We have three more long days ahead. I hope to blog one more time before I leave Japan. I will continue to update the Ning site: http://eghs-japan.ning.com/ through the end of this month with more pictures and videos when I have more time.