A-bomb Dome
The A-Bomb Dome (formerly the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall) in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park looks just like it does on TV. Small. Dwarfed by surrounding modern buildings, but elegant in its ruined condition. I just loving looking at it, trying to feel something appropriate.
The Peace Park is re-planted with trees and well wooded; it has plenty of bench seating and well-marked public toilets; it has lots of multi-lingual signage; there is no dearth of garbage bins. The park is about 20 acres with dozens (a bus tour guide told me sixty) of monuments in it, not one or two big monuments., so you can stroll around in relative quiet, to the chirruping of cicadas in the trees. But it lacks a sense of solemnity that I was expecting. I was expecting it to feel like the inside of a European gothic cathedral. The word "peace" is slapped on everything like a repeating song chorus.
The four major features of the Peace Park are the Peace Memorial Museum (underwhelming), the Peace Bell, the Cenotaph plus Peace Pool and Peace Flame, and then beyond it in the distance, framed by the Cenotaph and the trees is the A-Bomb Dome.