We had just 10 days from the presentation of my art in Pasadena to return home and prepare to board a plane and speed through the skies to Osaka, Japan.
Our first night did not look much different than what you would see in the US. Our Disney Hotel was just as popular with the Japanese as it’s counterpart in the US.

In the next two days we traveled by private coach from Osaka to Kyoto and Nara. There was never a break in the landscape where we felt we were moving from one city to another. We visited small shrines,

and large shrines,

and gold shrines,

and hidden in the trees shrines,

On our third day we visited Hiroshima. The sight of the first atomic bomb drop on civilization in the history of mankind. To see the skeleton of the building that stood at ground zero and to think of the lives that were lost and changed forever in the blink of an eye

and visited the Peace Memorial


Children were singing songs of peace at the base of a memorial built to remember the children who lost their lives, their innocence, not just in that moment but in shortened lives caused by the health problems that came in the following years after being exposed to the nuclear bomb.
The glass cases surrounding the memorial are filled with hand made paper cranes. It is a space to pause, remember and reflect.

Before the end of this day we traveled to Itsukushima Shrine. This shrine is very famous in photos but is usually surrounded by water in those photos. It never occurred to me that the tide goes out and you can actually walk up to and under it.

We will spend our 5th day in Japan (each crammed from morning to night with things to do and see) traveling by bullet train, reaching speeds up to 175 MPH, and participating in a tea ceremony before we head to Mishima for the duration of our stay in Japan.