When I was first planning my trip to Japan, I was debating where to go; I spent so much time agonising over whether to visit Nagasaki or Hiroshima. I was tempted by Nagasaki due to the 26 Martyrs memorial, and also being in a friendly seaside city, not to mention that there was a special deal on flights to Nagasaki to encourage tourism, only £40 one way! However, there was no cheap flight back except to Osaka, and since I needed to get to Tokyo to pick mum up from the airport, it wasn’t particularly convenient. With all this deliberating, I realised the night before I planned to go to Hiroshima that I hadn’t actually booked anywhere to stay! Jumped on hostelworld and there was only one hostel free which as it turned out wasn’t near Hiroshima at all, but oh well! I booked one night in the Omotenashi Hostel near Miyajima.

I caught the Shinkansen from Osaka to Hiroshima at around 11am to give me plenty of time in Hiroshima, and once I arrived tried to figure out how on earth to even get to the hostel. I had to catch a train for 25 mins from the main station, and then catch a streetcar the rest of the way. Very difficult to find the streetcar platform, I wandered around for about 10 mins in the blazing sunlight before realising it was directly under the previous train platform… Whoops! The streetcar also had a wonderful chart to help you calculate how much to pay for your journey. A conductor came round with a little purse and I handed him my fare, but it turned out he just changed larger coins into smaller ones, and you paid by dropping money in a box by the driver when you got off. I eventually reached Jigozen station and felt like I was in the absolute middle of nowhere. Wandered down the road in 39C heat and stumbled across my hostel, so dumped my bags and headed straight back to check out Hiroshima.

First stop was to see the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Peace Museum. Such a weird atmosphere, so eerie how every building near it is so new, and how this is the only surviving building in central Hiroshima. A man outside it was a pre-natal survivor and had copies of a book written by his father about his Hiroshima experience, very chilling. Some tourists from China were having their photos taken in front of the dome, bunny fingers up… Rather odd.

The Peace Museum is currently undergoing renovations so it was absolutely packed, but the artefacts on display were so sad, lots of children’s clothing and photographs of the ruins, as well as a stone wall with someone’s shadow permanently engraved on it, from when the person casting that shadow was vaporised… Horrifying. The Children’s Memorial is a great idea, with hundreds of thousands of paper cranes, folded by school children from around the world, all uniting against nuclear warfare.

In order to recover, I walked down Hondori Street to have a coffee, and a parade went past… Not entirely sure what it was in aid of! I went to go and have some Hiroshima style okonomiyaki which is called Nikudama soba, lots of spring onion on the top, delicious! I shared a table with a business man who was very embarrassed to sit near me for some reason. The restaurant was located in a brilliantly named shopping mall, “ASSE” 😁 I then caught the train back to the hostel with the intention of having an early night, but ended up drinking beer with two other backpackers, one from Essex and one from Holland. Oh well, who needs sleep! Tomorrow, off to see Miyajima shrine!