The reason we chose to go to Hiroshima when we did was so that we could be there for the anniversary of the bombing, and to attend the Peace Memorial Ceremony held on that day. The atomic bomb was dropped at 8:15am, on August 6, 1945, and so the ceremony ran from 8:00 to 8:50, with a minute silence from 8:15.
To be honest, it was not a highlight of the trip. Everything was run in Japanese, which is understandable, but made it hard to follow. We we were handed English translations of most of the speeches, but of course, a speech can be read much faster than it can be delivered. There was one speech in English, given by the Secretary General of the UN. Unfortunately he was strongly accented, no transcript was provided, and the Japanese people around us were bored by the English and chatted quite loudly, so I understood very little of what he had to say. However, we did get a glimpse of the Prime Minister of Japan, and the Secretary General of the UN, and the release of the doves was pretty cool. I was hoping to also include the Hiroshima Peace Song, and a translation, by using a translation tool, and then manually tidying up the output. However, Google Translate has failed me utterly, by spitting out exactly what I put in as output, and I don't feel like spending the necessary hours to do the whole process manually.
There were many more celebrations happening that day, including the floating of some 10,000 paper lanterns down the river that night, but unfortunately, we had to return to Takatsuki for a commitment at the Takatsuki Matsuri (Summer Festival), once again, post coming soon.
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