Hiroshima

Hiroshima was the last city on our to do list, aside from Fukuoka/Hakata, which has nothing worthy really to offer. Hakata is mostly a port town, put in the bad way. Not a traveller's port city, buy that of an industrial behemoth that nobody really wants to go to. So, determined to catch the last train from Hiroshima to Hakata/Fukuoka and not wanting to pay for a place to stay if we were only going to be there for a few hours, we made the concious decision to simply ramble the streets of Hakata while we waited for our ferry to leave at 7:30 in the morning.

But, back to Hiroshima. We met a guy named Yahn from Germany while we were staying at a hostel in Kyoto. He had been travelling around Japan for three weeks, was leaving in a couple days, but highly recommended staying in Hiroshima for longer than our original plan of a whopping 24 hours. We took his word for it, and I sure am glad that we did. We saw the touristy Hiroshima and Nagasaki stuff one day, and used the entire other day to go to the island of Miyajima, which turned out to be one of my favourite parts of the whole trip.

Although our tickets were for cars with relatively nice seats, and were all together, Ben and I frequently left our comfy chairs to go sit in the smoking cars, with ash trays that slide out of the hand rails and the window seals and air conditioning vents stained yellow with tar to smoke and drink the bottle of whiskey I bought at the duty free.
J Hoppers hostel in Hiroshima was reasonably priced, we got a private room for the three of us, and it is big enough that there are a cool group of people willing to share travel stories well in to the night or morning. It is also close enough to the tram stop to walk and is easily accessible from the JR train station.
Fried noodles, filled with cabbage, pork, squid and topped with a fried egg and green onions, also with an egg base.
The city of Hiroshima Monday, August 6th 1945 around 5 a.m.
Hiroshima Monday, August 6th 1945 after the A-Bomb "Little Boy" was dropped.
A child's finger nails that fell off while he was in the hospital after the bomb.
A child was buried in his back yard by his father while still melted to his beloved tricycle. Most of the people directly hit by the bomb were high school and middle school kids who were out training for air raids. The father dug up the bones of his son years later, gave him a proper burial, and donated this tricycle.
A young schoolboy's pants, with blood and flesh still stuck to them.
The Japanese and people of Hiroshima will never let the only remaining structure from the A-Bomb dropping fall, so that it can forever be testament to the importance of peace.

It looks quite strange sitting next to the new Hiroshima.


Hiroshima Castle, or "Carp Castle" sits in the northern centre of Hiroshima, and is obviously a reconstruction, but is still pretty neat to look at. The moat pictured here is filled with carp, which is where the castle that is housed inside, get its name.
"Carp Castle" has a pretty good museum of old samurai swords and armour to look at.

Near Hiroshima castle is this really cool park, you have to pay 250 Yen to get in, but just to see how nice it is is worth the few bucks. We grabbed some convenience store food to hold us over until we caught the "train" to Hakata, but we ended up taking a bus for half the price and twice the length. Needless to say, we didn't end up eating real meals for dinner, so it was a good thing we ate at this park.
It is quite possibly one of the weirdest things if have seen, but I kid you not, we saw a Loony sized jellyfish with about 8 tentacles floating around in here, among the freshwater catfish a carp.