On to Kobe, well here already and thinking about moving on

After a wander around Kagoshima yesterday I hit the road again. Well the rail. Decided to skip Nagasaki and go through to Kobe, not to see the town but use it as a base to see Hiroshima, which I did today.

While in Kagoshima I popped into the municipal museum where they have a small bitsa collection. That is bits of that and a bits of that with no theme to the work. The best piece was by the artist Seiji Togo and there was also a very good piece by Hiroki Horiwaki. The works of Picasso, Warhol, Monet, Matisse, Pissaro and other famous European artists were all pretty ordinary.

It was a wet arrival in Kobe at night, and the hostel was tucked away, not fun looking around in the rain. Caught the Shinkansen back to Hiroshima to visit the A-Bomb dome and Otorii. It is amazing how little appears to be affected by the blast. Of course the over 120,000 people who died in that crime against humanity are not there to be seen. It was odd to be visiting the site only 3 days after the 5th anniversary of the twin towers horror. At the remains of the Hiroshima castle there is a tree that survived the blast, just 770 meters (about .5 mile) from ground zero. On the banks of the river just meters from the dome are willows, planted since the attack. To see that life can grow on such a site is hard to fathom.

On a happier note was my visit to Miyajima to see the torii Gate at Itsukushima Shine. This is a torii that spectacularly sits out in the water off the island of Itsukushima (or Miyajima). Arrived at the ferry terminal and there were deer wandering around begging for food or just foraging in the bins. As they were very used to people around, I managed to get a few nice photos. The light was terrible to photograph the torii so you will just have to check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itsukushima_Shrine.

I will possibly be heading to Sapporo on Hokkaido tomorrow, but I will work that out later.