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| Hiroshima park festival (photo by TravellingFool.com) |
On the road again! This time we were putting Osaka behind us and making our way to Hiroshima. Everyone suddenly found themselves wondering how their bags got heavier since four days ago. It was probably due to all the touring and walking we had been doing over the last few days. All I know is that I felt every last pound of my luggage as I walked up the stairs to the train.
We managed to make it to shin-Osaka train station in one piece. We were swiftly reminded of the golden week holiday as we were met with throngs of people pushing shoving us to get through. That is one thing I will never miss about Japan - the shoving. Anyway we made it to the ticket office only to find that all of the seats were sold out for the bullet trains. That meant going I unreserved seats.
Before getting on the train I thought that the unreserved car was like the reserved one, everyone is in a seat and if you don't have a seat then you're not on that train. I was definitely mistaken. We crammed on the train and luckily Eric was smart enough to put all of our bags in the overhead bins.
It was standing room only for the two hour ride. We made a new friend with a woman who was living in Singapore with her Danish husband. It wasn't until the second to last stop that we were able to score some seats. Getting off the train we immediately tried to get tickets for the ride back.
Good thing we did too. We discovered that the reasonable train hours were all sold out already. We had to book 8am tickets and Jordan and I will be traveling separately from Eric and everyone else. So our goodbyes until July will be in the early morning haze just before we head different ways - us to continue our vacation and them to go back to work.
The hostel was once again right near the train station. We found the place right away but the front desk was closed for cleaning. We dropped our bags into luggage storage then headed out to the Atom Bomb dome and Peace Park.
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| Hiroshima Park (photo by TravellingFool.com) |
It was an amazing site to see. The dome was just as it was when the bomb dropped. There were so many sculptures and markers commemorating those who died there. The park was beautiful too plus the flower festival which consisted of a bunch of Asian performances from all over this side of the world and a parade. The park was packed with people all out to see the festivities.
We took a look around, stopping to check out the old Japanese men playing the Japanese version of chess. Finally we made our way back to the Atom Bomb museum.
The museum itself was educational at first and then disturbingly graphic later. It made it very clear the kind of devastation that the city went through and was pretty emotionally draining.
We were all ready to rest up so we headed back to the hostel. The tram ride was long. We couldn't figure out why there was a stop every twenty feet. We finally made it back and finally checked in. As I write this at midnight our luggage is still in the storage area. The room is a lot nicer then we thought it would be with bunks in a tatami room with our own toilet. After checking out the toilet Eric was disappointed to see it was not the modern Japanese kind with the fancy built in bidet. He then spent the next ten minutes convincing Jordan to try out the ass washing fiction. His argument must have been convince ht because Jordan decided at his next interaction with a bidet toilet he would try it out. We rested up while watching local news which was a bit ridiculous and everything Japanese news I portrayed as in western media.
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| Homemade Hiroshima style okonomiyaki (photo by TravellingFool.com) |
Once we were better reset we headed downstairs to check out the 200¥ okonomeyaki session the hostel was hosting. At first we thought it would be just a nice appetizer before heading out to dinner. We were nicely surprised to did a marathon eating session over the next two or three hours eating Hiroshima style okonomeyaki. It was delicious. It had noodles in it and wasn't as solid as the Osaka style.
We had our fill for under three bucks then headed out to the convenience store Lawson which was completely themed in the local baseball team the Hiroshima Carp. We grabbed a six pack of beer which is the same exact price as six individual cans because that's how Japan works but it came with okonomeyaki flavored carp themed jerky. I also got a pineapple drink and ice cream. We came back with our goodies to find the group still eating and headed to the kitchen to play games and drink.
We did really well playing jenga even though my so-called friends pushed me under the bus creating unstable towers that made it impossible to win. Good times.
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