家族と広島で (With family in Hiroshima)

After the second night in the Japanese style hotel in Kyoto, we took our bags, walked next to a nice small river to the metro station and took metros to the train station.  It was time to head back towards Fukuoka but with one extra stop on the way. After a couple of hours in shinkansen we got to smell the air of Hiroshima. It took quite a long time to find a place where we could leave our bags at the station but finally we managed to go and explore the city without too much to carry.

The weather was sunny which was more than fine for us after the rainy Kyoto. Most of the places we wanted to see were on a walking distance from the station which made it easier to go around. First we checked the garden of Hiroshima castle that itself looked very nice with the combination of white and wooden colors. It is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. In front of the castle we met a couple of persons from a samurai clan and they taught us to pose with "three arrows". There were only few cherry blossoms in the park but we saw some people who had got there for hanami, the blossom viewing which is very popular in Japan during the cherry blossoming. In the garden we also saw two players playing traditional Japanese music on live. So nice atmosphere!

From the castle we continued to the Atomic Bomb Dome, a must see attraction in Hiroshima. A former industrial promotion hall had surely suffered badly but it was still strong enough to be one of the few buildings that left standing after the explosion even though it had been close to the epicenter. Since the bomb dome was close to the city center and many restaurants, I had hoped to find a good place to taste okonomiyaki which is the specialty of Hiroshima. Unfortunately one place had a huge line outside the restaurant and others had closed after the busiest lunch time. Nevertheless, we found a nice restaurant where we spent about 1,5 hours.

After the lunch there was not too much time left before our train so we just quickly checked the Peace Memorial Park and the Peace Memorial Museum. In the park there were the Flame of Peace, a torch that is set to burn until all the world's nuclear weapons are destroyed and a cenotaph that has the names of the atomic bomb victims inside it. All these monument form a straight line together so one can fit them in a one photograph. The museum was very crowded and unfortunately the main building was under renovation but still we got a picture of the horror of the atomic bomb, I had wished to visit also Miyajima island in Hiroshima but I had to leave it for some other time since we took the six o'clock shinkansen back to Fukuoka.