Hiroshima by Night

Tour Day Eight - Miyajima

This afternoon was marred by the rain, which began as we were catching a train to the ferry port and hasn't stopped since.

Miyajima Island is famous for its floating Tori gate and even it the rain it was a beautiful sight!

The island is home to many 'wild' deer that roam the streets and will eat out of you hand. As long as they are treated peacefully they'll even let you scratch their heads!

We ventured part way up the steep hillside to visit Daishoin Temple. There we found plenty of jizo statues wearing hats along with several Buddhist momuments.

Tour Day Eight - Peace Museum

This morning was spent comtemplating Hiroshima's history.

The Peace Museum is a very humbling experience and well worth a visit if you want to learn more about the A bomb attack.

Even our normally chatty and jokey group were hushed and reserved while we walked around the displays.

One thing I found particulary eerie was the A bomb clock; this showed the number of days since the Hiroshima attack (25,124) and beneath it the number of days since the last Nuclear test (250).

Tour Day Seven - Okonomiyaki

Tonight our tour leader booked us in for a local speciality: Okonomiyaki.

As we discovered, Okonomiyaki is a sort of 'as you like it' style pancake made from vegetables, egg and pork.

The food was cooked in front of us and made to each of our specifications; Hayley ordered the basic (cabbage, pork, beansprouts and egg), where as I ordered mine as a basic plus Udon noodle base.

Some of the rest of the group had toppings such as onion, cheese or even shrimp!

As the 'pancakes' were made we all wondered how we'd ever be able to eat such a mountain of food, but I think we all managed!

Tour Day Seven - Hiroshima Peace Park

Today we travelled to the city of Hiroshima.

A rather somber day of our tour, we took an hour or so to learn the history of the A bomb attack and see the devestation that followed.

Our tour guide lead us on a short, respectful walk around the gardens and talked to us about what had happened.

As well as seeing the famous dome, we also took some time visiting the surrounding monuments, including the paper crane displays sent from around the world to honor the children whos lives were lost.

It was a touching afternoon.

Tour Day Six - Dining

Tonight we joined some of our tour group for dinner at a lovely local restaurant.

We ordered pork dumplings, rice balls, fried fishcakes and garlic chicken skewers.

The restaurant was right across the street from the hotel so we decided to share a drink too.

The food was the same style as our first group outing only even tastier.

Tour Day Six - Kanazawa

This morning we packed up and caught a couple of trains through beautiful scenery to Kanazawa.

After checking in to the hotel we went to explore the old Samurai district, stopping for a look inside an old house and grabbing a vanilla and red bean ice cream on the way.

Later we were booked in for a tour around Myoryuji - also known as the Ninja House. Although the tour was in Japanese we were given English bookets to read along the way.

The house was really interesting and we were shown secret passages, hidden pitfalls and concealed rooms!