Hiroshima/Miyajima

So I just got back from a CIEE weekend in Hiroshima and Miyajima. It was actually pretty fun for a lot of it, but it didn’t really feel like a weekend since I barely slept. On Friday, we got on the Shinkansen at around 5, leaving from Tokyo station, for a 4.5 hour ride into Hiroshima. The Shinkansen ride was pretty fun, we stopped off at all the major cities like Kyoto, Osaka, and Nagoya on the way. The next day, we went to various places in Hiroshima. At the A-bomb site, we got some terribly insensitive photos of people giving the peace sign and posing next to a friend who refused to smile and looked terribly serious and angry.
Then we went to the Hiroshima memorial museum, which was actually really interesting. The video they showed though was SO GRAPHIC and disturbing. I am not even usually squeamish, but they really made me gag with the videos of people’s wounds. One girl who lost an eye, they zoomed in and opened it up and it was so disturbing. I can live with never seeing that again. They also had some wax figures that were pretty freaky, with their skin melting off.Then the next day we went to Miyajima, which was very pretty. But the main highlight was the DEERS. And the monkeys. Although the deers were EVERYWHERE. And they were very friendly, I went up and pet a lot of them, and they were always just wandering the streets along with everyone else. It was awesome, all towns should be like that. Although I fear for them sometimes…As I was sitting down, I saw this one dumb bimbo with stiletto heels FEEDING one of the deer a fucking PAMPHLET. I was kind of in shock. And this wasn’t just a small pamphlet. This was a huge pamphlet. And she was standing there for about 5 minutes, giving the deer a bite and then waiting for it to swallow and then giving it again. It was kind of hilariously depressing. And she had no expression on her face, like she had no idea what she was doing. I think she was a Tokyo-ite (from how she was dressed) and probably didn’t know that pamphlets aren’t nutritious meals for animals.
After going to the top of the mountain, I saw a wild monkey, which was pretty exciting. It was very exhibitionist, too, it would just sit down and pose and scratch itself.