hiroshima & miyajima

The trip to Hiroshima was a bit longer than I anticipated – roughly 5 hours of train travel with an hour layover in Osaka. Fortunately the Shinkansen is relatively comfortable and gave me an opportunity to catch up on some sleep. I arrived into town late in the afternoon and after checking into the hostel and cleaning up a bit I went walking around town. Fully reconstructed after WWII, it’s a modern town like any other in Japan. As a result, it doesn’t have a lot of character, but it’s tragic history is certainly thought provoking. After walking around town, snapping some night time pictures of the A-Bomb dome I made my way to an Okonomiyaki restaurant to taste the local specialty. In Hiroshima, the okonomiyaki is made with a variety of ingredients which are cooked independently and then covered with the cooked pancake on either side. It’s essentially one massive savory pancake. Mine had cabbage, udon, squid, shrimp, and a variety of sauces. Very tasty, but way too much food.

The next morning I woke up early and caught a train just south of Hiroshima to Miyajima, where the famous floating tori is located. The orange tori is located on the water just outside the main shrine on the island. With the tide changing the water level as much as two meters daily, the scenery can change dramatically depending on what time you get there. In fact, at low tide, you can walk out to, and under, the gate. I got there just before high tide and snapped a few pictures of the shrine and tori before walking around town. Along the way I enjoyed some of the local specialties, including grilled local oysters (good, but not great), steamed buns filled with eel (not bad), and a small chocolate filled cake like thing (quite tasty).

Since I only had one full day in the area, I made my way back to Hiroshima for the afternoon and toured the Peace Memorial Park, which includes the A-Bomb Dome and the Atomic Bomb museum. It’s all rather depressing and much like the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh and the Burma Railroad Museum in Katchanaburi, it leaves you with a very uneasy feeling. Well worth visiting though. Though it was almost nightfall, I quickly made my way to the other end of town to visit one of the nicer parks in town. I only had 45 minutes there, but the serene setting was well worth the trip. Nothing quite like a Japanese garden. And so that was it for Hiroshima and Miyajima. One very full day, and some very achy feet, but some great memories. Now back to Tokyo for a couple days before heading north to Hokkaido for some skiing.