Japan – Day 3 – Whisked away to Hiroshima

A temple in the middle high rise

Waking up in the hostel was great for about a second until better recollection of the previous night occurred. The early start that was planned for the day transformed into a late start. None the less, better late than never and such it was. K’s House hostel was accommodating and took care of our backpacks for the day and we headed off down towards the peace memorial. We asked for a suggestion of places for breakfast and the lady at the front desk suggested either Matsui or Yoshinoya the latter of which we had seen the previous day. That should make things easy, except that it didn’t and we spent ages walking along the main road looking for Matsui or Yoshinoya, as it turned out we’d walked past both places but eventually after giving up and just entering a restaurant randomly we found ourselves in a Matsui. As usual, robot with meal buttons and meals delivered on a tray, wonderful.

The walk from K’s hostel to the peace memorial park was about 25 minutes or 20 minutes if you’re in a hurry. You would be able to catch a tram but we figured since we’re unfit it wasn’t a bad plan to just walk it. The A-Bomb dome is on the eastern side of the Ota river where it splits into two sections. This made finding it fairly easy. The building itself was in a state of semi-repair when we arrived as some additional re-enforcing is required to keep the structure stable. It is an impressive site, the destruction caused here by the bomb was clearly immense. While there is not much signage out in the park lands apart from some sobering quotes and statements don’t feel disappointed as the museum is excellent and if you pick-up an audio-guide you’ll learn far more than you really want to. We had felt like we wanted to know more when we wandered through the park, so maybe the best way to put this at rest is to hold your visual / sensory appetite and go through the museum first and then walk through the park. The peace bell is a meaningful stop to be part of and the Sadako memorial (as we had read about this in primary school) is also another sobering item. Also another brief hint is, if you feel the urge to make a pit stop when in the park lands just holdout till the museum.

We had budgeted about 2 hours to go through the park and the museum, however if you do use the audio guide and you don’t race the information you’ll find that the museum takes roughly two hours and the park 30 minutes to an hour. This left us short on time (as we’d already had a late start) and we had to get across to Miyajima. If we didn’t make it however we weren’t bothered as this was actually a ski trip which we’d decided to do a bit of site seeing on (just a pitty that the Nozawa-Onsen snow reports indicated that currently skiing might be mighty optimistic).

A change in the weather at this point while walking back toward the station makes us quite happy that we hadn’t underestimated winter as Tokyo had been so pleasant.

Our decision at this point was to pickup backpacks and take them to Miyajima and place them in a locker at the station. This was a good plan but when we were on JR Sanyo line to Iwakuni or Miyajima-guchi (whichever is fastest at the time) we realised that perhaps there weren’t going to be lockers at the Miyajima station. However much to our good fortune there were, so if in doubt, yes there are lockers at Miyajima-guchi station (immediately to your left as you leave the platform) as well as at the Miyajima-guchi ferry (remember that the JR rail pass works on the ferry). Cross over then from the ferry to Miyajima island was quick and we were entertained by two upcoming Japanese rockstars who put on their song and danced to a camera (presumably for their video) while dressed in frocks (for both the girl and the guy).

A rather nice view of the Tori gates, we were also entertained at this time by two budding Japanese rockstars in frocks strutting their stuff

A local guard dog keeping the restaurant protected

Tori gates at Miyajima, but alas the sun just won’t set through them.

If you time things right while you’re on the ferry you will get a good shot of the Tori gates with the mountains in the background which is possibly better than the shots you’ll get on the island (although from a bit further away). The Island is quite touristy (we were not sure whether there was alot of Japanese site see-ers or whether they were of some other decent but there were plenty of Caucasians), but as with all of what we’ve seen in Japan, clean tidy and spruiking well stocked with vending machines. The Tori gates up close are extremely impressive but sadly they don’t quite point into the sunset so you can’t quite get the sunset with the gates image that seems to float around. As we were short on time we wandered through the island and visited the shrines only from the outside which was enough for us.

We attempted to locate somewhere for dinner off the island as we thought that the restaurants on the island were possibly a little too touristy and not great value for money. However as it turns out if you don’t eat on the island you’ll have trouble finding somewhere to eat until you get back to Hiroshima (don’t get us wrong, I’m sure there are plenty of places in Miyajima-Guchi but for an inexperienced traveller in Japan there certainly didn’t appear to be much that looked good). Thus after our failed dinner attempt we trained our way back and headed for Kyoto. During our stop in Shin-Osaka we did not get any sushi.

The Itsukushima shrine from the side Miyajima

Arriving in Kyoto at about 8:30 we followed our hotel’s instructions and checked in at the Capsule Ryokan, which we had been a little unsure about. However the room while small literally has everything you need, including a toilet which opens up happily when you open the toilet door, it’s just like a happy robot ready to receive. Without even taking our shoes off to sit down we headed straight out to have dinner, specifically Okanomiayaki which we had sought after in Miyajima and failed at. Luckily the Ryokan host directed us to a fantastic little place called Chaban which served us Okanomiyaki from a large tepanyaki style plate in front of the small seating bench. The chef was a cool old ‘dude’ who appreciated the occasional thumbs up and made a good show of flipping things around. As the night drifted on waiters became their own chefs and prepared their dinners for the long night. We however were ready for bed.

Done and full