We went back to our first breakfast cafe in this area of Osaka and got a great welcome. The lady was out and the owner was doing all the cooking and welcoming by himself. We had more of their amazing toast with maple syrup. As we were eating the lady returned on her bike. As we got up to pay the owner came around the counter and with the help of his phone said, very nice to see you again and then asked if we were going home today? We said we were going to Hiroshima tomorrow and he became animated and pointed to the lady – and his phone said, it is her hometown! Oh Japan, stop with all your kindness I’m not able to cope. We bowed and I’ve a new addition to my bow – my hand jumps up to my heart. It means, Stop, please don’t stop, you’re making me cry.

This would be our last full day in Osaka. Tomorrow at noon we are leaving on the Shinkansen and travelling to Hiroshima where we will spend one night before going to Kyoto where we expect to see lots of pretty temples. Then back to the hotel near Osaka Kix airport (the one on the manmade island) for our last night in Japan.

As I write we are in the Minoh Park, a big forested park in the north of Osaka. We walked about 2km to the Minoh Waterfall and on the way back spotted a cafe in amongst the trees. The most fancy looking cafe we’ve been in here. There’s classical music playing and all around us are coffee themed antiques. When our coffee arrived earlier we were more than surprised by the grandeur of silver coffee pots, cream jug and sugar bowl.

Needless to say, matching cups and saucers also arrived and everything was laid out so precisely by the young waitress. Our only small concern with all this grandeur is that if they don’t take credit cards our Yen reserves of cash may not cover this feast. We ordered coffee and sandwiches.

We always forget to top up the cash… And there are no atms here in the forest. We are 1km from the station so even if I stay as collateral it would take Denis more than 20 minutes to get there and back. But there may not even be atms at the station… Would he come back without the cash? Or would he take the train into the city to look for one there? And this cafe closes in an hour. These are the questions they don’t ask you to consider on a pre-marriage course… What will become of me here on my own in the forest?

They accepted our credit card. And it cost less than two coffees plus sandwiches at home.

There’s also an insect museum in this park. There’s a lot of big insects here that I hope never to meet but big and small they are all providing a service to us and the food we need to nourish us. Without them we wouldn’t survive because our food wouldn’t have an environment it could grown in or the assistance it needs in procreating. We are closely connected to insects whether I like it or not.

There was one section I loved – The Butterfly Garden. It was a two story humid glass house full of green trees and plants with colourful butterflies flying freely. They flew close enough you could feel the breeze from their wings. You know the Chinese saying that goes something like, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can be felt on the other side of the world? It’s a metaphor for how interconnected we are. How we are dependent on each other, how what happens here has effects there.

We will be visiting the peace museum in Hiroshima. One of the things I want to see is the Children’s Peace Monument. Shiori told me about the little girl, Sadako, who was only 2 years old and 2 km from where the bomb fell but was uninjured. At least they thought she was uninjured. When she was 8 she was diagnosed with the A-bomb-disease, leukemia. In the hospital her friend brought her origami paper and told her about a legend. It goes that if a sick person folds 1,000 paper crane birds they will get better soon.

Sadako made even more than 1,000 cranes but she knew she wasn’t getting better, she did not get well, she died within the year. But her school friends had joined her making paper cranes and the idea spread across Japan and around the world. And money was collected and they built the Children’s Peace Monument.

Engraved on the base of the statue are the words:
This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.