DAY 7: Osaka to Hiroshima Saturday 1st April 2023

Toilets. Let’s talk about Japanese toilets. Fancy toilets. Heated-seat toilets. Toilets with washing options (front or back). Toilets that sing to you, or even have piped running water music so that your next-door neighbour can’t tell if it’s you or the toilet making the noise. Never in all our travels have I seen such elaborate and high-tech toilets!

To be fair, having been here before, when I think of Japan, it does trigger immediate thoughts of fancy toilets 😉 I think of non-toilet things too of course, like Sushi and Ramen and Udon and Teppanyaki and Tempura. Sometimes I think of Sumo wrestlers and Ninjas as well, and of beautiful, neatly dressed ladies wearing elaborate Kimonos. I think of pale pink Cherry blossom in Spring and super-fast on-time trains.

Unfortunately, when I think of Japan, I also think of atomic bombs. Today we headed to Hiroshima, famous for the tragic events at the end of World War II.

Hiroshima was the first military target of a nuclear weapon in human history, where on August 6, 1945, the US Air Force dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on the city. Most of Hiroshima was destroyed, and by the end of that year over 100,000 had died as a result of the blast and its effects.

To start our Saturday, we again enjoyed the included buffet breakfast at the hotel, then packed our bags and headed to the station. We timed things to perfection, now feeling very confident in our understanding of, and the timings for, both the Metro and Shinkansen trains. After transferring from the Metro to the Shinkansen area at Shin-Osaka station we noticed somewhat more noise than usual (its normally so, so quiet) and a few of the well-dressed uniformed station attendants rushing up and down the platform. The unthinkable was happening… the trains were running late!

The platform signs flashed red, and the announcements became more frantic in both Japanese and English over the loudspeakers. Due to an emergency the train was going to be 20 minutes late! In my experience, an almost daily occurrence in Sydney, but here, a very rare phenomenon.

Once abord the train, we easily found our reserved seats and settled in for the 330km, 1.5-hour trip to Hiroshima. I am now regularly using these train trips to write this blog, meaning I don’t waste any valuable holiday time sitting writing it in a motel room. I load photos onto the Jetpack app on my phone as we go, and usually also add photo captions at the same time, which makes the actual writing of the blog much faster. I’d need to do a count, but after a least 100 blog posts over the past few years, I have got pretty efficient at it!

A 20-minute walk dragging our bags through Hiroshima to the hotel was a little tiring, but we left them at the hotel reception ready to check in after 3pm and then headed straight back out to walk to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park area. We visited the Atomic Bomb Dome, the Children’s Peace Monument, the Cenotaph, the fountain of Prayer and then the Peace Museum.

Even though I have visited here before, it was still incredibly moving, especially talking to the local volunteer guides who each had been impacted by the 1945 bombing. The slow walk through the deliberately dimly lit and amazingly put-together museum, with its hundreds of artifacts, photos, films, damaged remnants and documented stories was incredible and I, along with the thousands of others visiting the museum today quietly reflected on the horrors of war.

It was still not quite check-in time, so we slowly wandered back to the hotel via numerous shopping malls and covered ‘shopping streets’. I was starting to get a little hungry, so we chose a sushi restaurant for a late lunch. Just like Sushi restaurants in Australia, there were dessert options, so Dave ate a Creme Brulee with ice-cream, while I devoured a delicious and fresh Sushi ‘set’.

Still not feeling 100 per cent, I had a rest once we got to the hotel on the largest bed I have ever seen! It was however definitely not the largest room, so I had to crawl across it to get to my side which was up against the wall. While resting I did do some dinner research, but was so overwhelmed by the number of options, we decided to just try our luck and find something nearby.

Our hotel was close to lots of things, including a whole district filled with restaurants, bars and cafes. The enticing smell of grilled meat was making us both hungry, so we decided it was time to try one of the numerous Yakiniku restaurants. Yakiniku is a Japanese-style BBQ, where you grill your own meat, and is becoming hugely popular worldwide. I’ve not seen any Yakiniku restaurants in Australia, but even Wagga now has a Korean BBQ restaurant which is very similar.

Even though there was an English menu, we were not entirely sure what to order, but ended up with some fresh vegetables and marinated assorted meat pieces ready to grill, plus some rice. Two of the three pages in the menu were filled with pictures of offal – which I did not choose!

It was really delicious, and Dave was pretty pleased to be eating the same food as me for a change!

After dinner we walked until we hit 20,000 steps, mostly people watching, but we also managed to find a second-hand bookshop that sold James Bond books in Japanese – the perfect addition to Dave’s collection. (A$3 each)

20,000 steps equals time for bed! Tomorrow, we use our seven-day Japan Rail Pass for the final day, we have three train rides booked to get to Nagasaki, on the Southern Island of Kyushu.