Hiroshima

3:00 contrary to past experience, the whole family was packed and jacketed and shoed and ready to go thirty minutes prior to

3:30 we were packing the van and buckling the girls into their car seats and headed off to the airport to begin our journey when

3:45 I want LoveyBear.

Oh no!

I didn't pack LoveyBear. Should we go back? If we go back, will we make our flight? We're only 15 minutes in, but that's 45 minutes lost. She won't sleep the entire weekend if we don't go back for that bear. Hui jia! Hui jia! Return home! Return home! we exhorted our confused driver. He must have said to us, I thought we were going to the airport? I thought you had a flight to catch? Hui jia! Hui jia! We spoke in panicked, urgent voices in an attempt to communicate the problem as he turned the van around and headed back through the slow traffic to

4:00 pulling up in front of our building. I slammed open the door, raced into the lobby, through the doors, and stood quietly waiting for the elevator. I could practically hear the elevator music mocking my lack of speed. It arrived as a pack of youngsters getting off of school, each slowly piling on to the waiting elevator, and then disembarking on separate floors with long good-byes and promises to meet at the playground.

4:02 I raced into the apartment, turned it upside down searching for the bear, and raced back down to the van. Holding up the bear with a wry look on my face, our driver showed an expression of final understanding and took off with speed toward the airport once again.

Unfortunately, this is not the end.

5:19 we arrived at the check-in counter.

5:20 the sign above the counter read Osaka check-in closed. The people behind the counter never spoke to us, and only spoke to each other in Chinese. There seemed to be a problem, but they were not interested in letting us in on the secret.

5:40 we raced away from the counter, pushed ourselves through security, and ran to the gate. Where we stood for 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes - ready to be called and boarded at any minute, because they had exhorted us to hurry!

6:05 we boarded the bus to drive us out to our airplane, neatly parked in the middle of the tarmac. And finally we were off.

A simple 1-1/2 hour flight from Shanghai to Osaka. We ate our picnic dinner, read stories, crawled over the seats and were there.

The last people to leave the plane, we wondered where our gate-checked strollers had landed. Apparently China Eastern Airlines has a policy of not returning strollers to where they have been checked.

We did our best to guide our walking toddlers through the arrival hall, quarantine, and immigration where we would meet our strollers. Much akin to herding two kittens up a hill, after sitting on a plane for 90 minutes they were full of energy and curiosity. And this being entirely civilized Japan, we were chastised and made to clean up any messes they made.

None of our ATM cards would work.

We missed the train into town.

We could not afford the nearly US$200 taxi into town.

We had incorrect directions for the bus into town.

We finally found the bus, beginning an hour long journey with 2 young ones at 10:30 at night. The arrival at what turned out to be a very nice hotel was sweet, although expensive.

And so our weekend in Japan began.. Luckily, it got much better. The weather remained beautiful the entire visit, with the sun shining brightly and a light breeze blowing cherry blossoms to the ground everywhere we went. We picnicked under the cherry trees amongst the other revelers in Osaka, and then jumped the bullet train to Hiroshima for the remainder of the weekend.

The first sight of a nuclear holocaust, Hiroshima is a wonderfully green and vibrant city. A city dedicated to peace, the mayors send a letter of protest every time a nation conducts nuclear tests. The tragedy of the nuclear explosion was immense, and the museum documented it in gruesome and horrifying detail. On the fence in my opinion about the justness of nuclear weaponry, I am now fully convinced that this is a horrifying way to torture and then kill innocent civilians. We pondered that although conventions of war decry the inclusion of civilians in warfare, it seems to happen in most conflicts, and always in an appaling manner. I am currently reading What is the What by Dave Eggers, a retelling of one of the Lost Boys' of Sudan's journey through war and refugee camps. The horrors described in both wars are wildly different from each other, and both quite literally unimaginable to me. But these questions of war and justice disappeared in the museum's peaceful surroundings.

Hiroshima is a city of parks, rivers and public places. Fitting over 1 million people into a rather tight space would make many spaces seems cramped, but Hiroshima has no such feeling. We arrived in the midst of sakura, a Japanese tradition of socializing under the fading cherry blossoms with your family and friends and celebrating life. Underneath every tree was a blue tarp covered with adults and children around a bbq grill nibbling and drinking and enjoying the beautiful weather.

Apparently when the nuclear bomb fell in Hiroshima, experts predicted that nothing would grow there for 75 years. That was 50 years ago, and the hypocenter is now a green park covered with flowers and trees, bushes and cherry blossoms. Locals picnicked in this park just like any other. And this is the perfect vision of Hiroshima, in my mind. A city ravaged by war, recovered through parks and picnics and the love of peace. A profound recovery, and a beautiful place to spend the weekend.

By the end of the trips, our credit cards and ATMs had worked more often than not and we had never had to wash dishes for our meals. We made every bus, train, streetcar and airplane's scheduled departure times and rarely waited more than a few minutes. The hectic beginning to our trip quickly receded into an amusing day of travel, fading away from the memory of a lovely weekend spent outside in Hiroshima.