What can you say about Hiroshima that doesn’t seem trite in light of what happened there during WWII? It’s a surprisingly lovely city – calling it ‘bland’ as one of our group did was a particularly shitty and tone-deaf thing to say, and not even true. The peace memorial park is of course mandatory, beautiful while incredibly moving. The peace memorial museum…let’s just say we all left it feeling bludgeoned. 
The memorial to Sadako Sasaki, the girl behind the story, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Around the memorial are booths storing some of the hundreds of thousands of paper cranes made by children in Japan in her memory.
The peace memorial park
some of the cranes Sadako-chan made
Because Hiroshima is basically built on sand, there is no underground light rail. Instead, they still use trams, and like other Japanese cities (and San Francisco) they use tram cars from all around the world.
After lunch, we went by ferry to Miyajima Island, supposedly one of the three most beautiful seascapes in Japan. I was underwhelmed, sadly. The famous gate didn’t look very impressive, and it was a dull day. However, it was fun wandering around the many, many spectacularly tacky tourist shops on offer
Yes, there were deer here too
and many schoolkids
Underwhelming, isn’t it? I guess it’s prettier in the sun and at full tide
This is a tanuki, which our guide insisted was a Japanese badger but is actually a racoon dog. You see them everywhere outside business as they are a spirit of prosperity and good luck. Dear readers, I lusted after my own racoon dog of prosperity and Miyajima’s tacky shops did not fail me 🙂
The island is also famous for…wooden rice paddles. This is a giant one in honour of that
A nice lion at the shrine
And a couple being married in a traditional ceremony
Then we went back to Hiroshima for okonomiyaki in Okonomi-mura (a kind of food theme park). I was a bit nervous about trying this again as Doug and I had had this rather over the top form of pancake at a market in Queensland, and the brown sauce and mayonnaise made the damn thing inedible (I can eat almost anything, I should add.) However I was assured these could be left off, and they were (although the lady who ran the wonderful ‘pancake joint’ for want of a better term, need me to repeatedly assure her I really, really didn’t want that stuff on my pancake!) The layers of vegetables, bacon, cheese and pancakes made a pile of food even I couldn’t finish, but it was all great fun sitting around the grill as it was made, and consuming much beer 🙂 Not the most gourmet thing we ate on the trip, and I wouldn’t seek it out, but it was definitely better than the stuff we had in Australia 🙂
Next day we were off to Nagasaki via Hakata, and so onto the next post!