Tuesday 18th March 2025

Woke around 0815. Breakfasted on coffee and ham, egg and cheese rolls that we’d purchased yesterday. Packed up and checked out. Flagged down a taxi to Kyoto station. Had a few hours to kill before our train to Hiroshima…decided to store our bags in lockers…took about 15 minutes to work out how to do it! Got there in the end. 

Walked up to the Higashi Hongan-ji Temple and mooched about the Founders Hall, apparently one of the largest timber structures in the world. The whole complex had been meticulously rebuilt in the late 19thC after the original buildings were destroyed in a fire. Walked across town to the National Museum. 

There was an exhibition on Anui culture…an Inuit people who occupied Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and islands to the south-west of Alaska…we were encouraged to touch the Anui’s tools, which hailed from the Kinki region! We also wandered about the architecturally inspiring new wing of the museum, before lunching in the cafe. Kath struggling to walk, so we flagged down a cab back to the station and spent another 15 minutes working out how to retrieve our baggage! Took the 1502 Bullet train to Hiroshima. 

Arrived at 1642 and took a cab to our hotel, a 35-storey meg-hotel that looked akin to a cruise ship. Our rooms were on the 22nd floor, affording fabulous views southward toward the sea and nearby islands. We can see the Atomic Bomb Dome from our rooms…the remains of the only building left standing after the first atomic bomb detained 600 metres above it 80 years ago. It’s breathtaking to think that the urban sprawl of this huge, modern city all dates after that event! 

We ventured out to find food around 1900…very cold outside. Snow forecast for tomorrow! Walked through a long arcade to an area of the city renowned for it’s okonomiyaki, a noodle pancake…had to queue for a seat at a little okonomiyaki joint, and then watched in fascination as the chef built these edifices before our eyes. He worked like a Trojan…but with a smile on his face. Don’t think Kath and I realised how long the process would take…it was 2100 by the time we ate! For all the myriad ingredients that we saw going in to it, the end result was disappointingly bland. We ate up and waved farewell, and hightailed it back to the hotel for bath and bed…