Miyajima

Early start, up and out by 7am.  We had a long day trip planned to Hiroshima.  The Shinkansen gets there in a little over an hour, and I clocked the speed on Google maps at 180mph.  Its expensive but makes a trip like that possible.  

When we got there we taxid to Hiroshima castle, which for obvious reasons isn't the original, but was rebuilt in the late 50s.  Its now a museum to itself with history of the building, reconstruction, and a wonderful mascot called Shironyan, a cat with a hiroshima castle hat to guide and inform visitors.

After that we headed a few blocks over to the atomic bomb dome.  Its a building that sort of survived the blast due to it being almost directly under it.  The bomb was detonated around 1500ft above ground which left the walls and metal dome structure and a staircase in tact.  Not the case for the people inside.  Dramatic piece of history and a pretty spooky feeling just to be in that spot.

Nearby is the Peace Park, with monuments and the peace flame, going since 64' and until there are no more nuclear weapons.

We eschewed the museum as we had to get going on a ferry that left from the dome.  Miyajima/Ikutsushina Island is a mountainous island in Hiroshima Bay with old temples and shrines, and a big famous torii gate that sits in the water when the tide is up.  

I was very bummed to find out that the ropeway on the island that lead to the top was down for seasonal maintenence starting exactly today.  Really wanted that view of the islands and was the main reason we'd planned it but ah well.  

Oh yeah another thing the island has is a bunch of scruffy deer that don't care about people, unless they have food.  The ones we saw looked ok but I know from articles these deer have issues.  The policy is not to feed them like the deer in Nara but also not to do anything about the population.  Sooo they'll scrounge for human trash, and starvation is a thing.  Pretty sad, BUT none of that was in view for us.  The ones we saw were cute and looked aight.

There's a pretty long market with food, drinks, some typical souvenir shops.  They're also known for their oysters so Sarah and I ate a pair of pretty huge oysters that weren't bad.  They weren't really salty which was a surprise.  We also had 2 deep fried ones which things usually are just better fried.  They have maple leaf shaped treat called Momiji Manju.  Made of buckwheat and rice cake with something inside.  We went with custard and chocolate.  Ours were prepackaged and we're fine.  I think they don't freshly cook them unless the islands really hopping in spring and summer.

Had a lemon chu-hi which i think is just like a vodka lemonade that was pretty dangerous good.  We finished it off the Okonomiyaki, which is a savory pancake, although the Hiroshima version is a bit different.  They layer it so its a thin bottom of the cabbage pancake, then a layer of noodles, then the other stuff.  It was also quite good.

The torii gate in the water is very pretty. We got some nice pics of the Hiroshima shore.  We didn't stay long enough for the tide to go out where you can walk up to the gate, but that's ok.  Boat back, taxi back, shinkansen back.

Kobe around our place was busy.  Food everywhere, people out.  We didn't want to spend much and also preferred to grab back to the hotel as it was late.  Sarah spotted a curry place "My curry" that looked fast food like.  We figured out the ticket machine after a bit.  Maaaan it was good.  Like it definitely is a Japanese "fast food" curry place but that doesn't mean bad or low quality here.  Pork cutlets with thick crispy breading.  Rice, curry, shredded cabbage.  Really hit the spot.  And cheap at 2000yen for both of us or around 13 bucks.  Yum

Did another onsen bath to soak my feet and it was busy tonight.  Never did get the ramen last night or tonight.  Too tired and full.

A typical public toilet