May 30, 2018
The Vanderbilt soccer team, coaching staff and key staffers are on an 11-day adventure to Japan that will include competitions, educational opportunities and visits to historic sites and attractions in the country. Over the next nine days, VUCommodores.com will provide daily content, including student-athlete blogs, videos, photo galleries and social media highlights.
May 29 – Day 7 | May 28 – Day 6 | May 27 – Day 5 | May 26 – Day 4 | May 25 – Day 3 | May 24 – Day 2 | May 23 – Day 1
May 30 – Day 8 in Tokyo
By Gabby Rademaker
Rising senior, East Lake, Fla.
Our team began the day taking a train ride to Hiroshima. There, we visited the A-Bomb Dome and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. When we first arrived at the location of the blast, you could see the remnants A-Bomb dome with the iron still there. We ventured to the actual museum right around the block. I probably spent the majority of my time at the museum watching the testimonies of the survivors of the bombings. There was a story about a girl whose house was 0.3 kilometers from the blast and yet she survived. It was crazy to hear people’s stories, and it made me realize the event really didn’t take place that long ago.
Listening to the testimonies became my favorite part of the day because one of my favorite childhood books is Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. It’s about Hiroshima and the bombing and a little girl who was three years old at the time. She survived but was ultimately diagnosed with cancer from the radiation. It never hit me that, all this time, one of my favorite books was a true story. It was surreal.
After heading back to Kyoto, we had some down time where I went on a run with Becky Rossett. It was beautiful taking in the town away from the large group and being able to take photos and relax. In the evening, we went back to the Geisha District and it was so cool because we saw a few different geisha during our tour around their tea houses and schools. Geisha continue their careers for as long as they choose and some are between 70-80 years old while others are young. After our tour, we had a traditional bento box dinner, which was probably one of my favorite meals of the trip.
After dinner, we were visited by a geisha who performed, took photos with us, and allowed us to ask her a bunch of questions. I didn’t realize how funny and personable she would be and how talented she was. She was beautiful and funny, and meeting her was probably one of my other favorite experiences on this trip.
Overall, I love playing soccer, and being able to play internationally has been a dream. The language of soccer is universal, so while it’s been hard to communicate in a daily setting, it’s totally different on the field. While our style is so different from the two teams we’ve played, that was the one time we were all in our element as a team. And even though we could hardly understand each other, it was so easy to connect with both teams we played because of that commonality.
Spent the morning visiting the Hiroshima A-Bomb Dome and the Peace Memorial Museum. We also had the privilege of meeting a survivor of the 1945 bombing. pic.twitter.com/KDNE7bGrTB
 Vanderbilt Soccer (@Vandysocr) May 30, 2018
