the travels blog

Japan 2011 Day 8 – Osaka & Hiroshima

Day 8 - We left our hotel late enough to allow time for rest and packing after staying 3 nights in Osaka, but unfortunately since we had to swap trains 2 times (JR-Namba to Imamiya to Osaka to Shin-Osaka) to get on our scheduled 10:59 Shinkansen to Hiroshima, we just missed our Shinkansen, which meant that we had to wait for the next Shinkansen. That is probably an fml moment in this trip.

Since we missed our Hikari, we had to catch the next Kodama which was slower. This allowed us about 10min at the Shinkansen station to get food. I got one of those bento boxes from the freezer for ¥420. It was delish! I also got Belgian waffles - it was a nice as well! I got one with chocolate :)

japanese train food!

But holy crap, we realised halfway through our train ride that this Kodama train we took because we missed our Hikari*, we had to add an extra hour on the train ride (coz our train stopped at all stops) plus the added 30min at the platform waiting. Sadface, we finally got to Hiroshima about 2 hours after our planned time and had to catch the “streetcar” which were a trams. With trams and the layout of Hiroshima CBD, its a lot like Melbourne. We finally got to our hotel and decided to get lunch at a curry place at 4pm. Lols. So late.

We walked around the Peace Memorial Museum - such a comprehensive museum of the Hiroshima bombings.

[peace memorial museum]

Provided comprehensive information about the bomb, the political tension between allied and the Japanese, the before and after maps of Hiroshima and even remnants of the bombings. The bombing really effected Hiroshima, and I felt closer to the Japanese culture than ever.

[amazing remnants of the bombings inside the museum]

Sadly we got there a bit too close to their closing time so we only got to spend 45min in there. We sooo could’ve spent so much longer in there. Once we got shoo-ed out of the museum, we went to see the other parts of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. We saw the Children’s Monument which has an incredible number of paper cranes donated to the city of Hiroshima - we even saw one from a school in Sydney during their 2010 Japan study tour.

[paper cranes]

Next off the list at the Peace Memorial Park was the Atomic Bomb Dome - which is the famous building you see on TV shows and all.

After that, we saw the Hypocentre of the bombing - which was where the bomb was exactly dropped. It just had a monument of the hypocentre - it actually was just at the walkway of a really small side street which was next to a small hotel. Lols.

[hypocentre]

After the cultural side of Hiroshima, we hen ventured into the shopping district of Hiroshima where it just felt like a smaller version of the Osaka or Tokyo version of their shopping districts.

[such tourists]

Then after that - it was off to the happening-night-area of Hiroshima in search of food - we found another Japanese restaurant, authentic too! This was the first food place where we had to take our shoes off!

at dinner, SK ripped a 5000yen note. yes. she really did.

After dinner, it was quite late since we started dinner at 9am - so we headed back to the hotel for bed.

*there are different types of shinkansens in japan - in order of speed from the fastest: Nozomi Hikari Kodama