Days 6-7: Hiroshima

It was time to take our first bullet train. We took a taxi to the train station and bought our Shinkansen tickets. They are not cheap, but the train was 2 ½ hours to get to Hiroshima instead of a 6 hour drive. The boys got bento boxes to eat on the train, they all enjoyed those. Jumping on a streetcar to our hotel, we successfully managed public transportation. It’s so nice to be able to just tap our Suica cards from our Apple Wallet for all local public transport. Our hotel was called The Knot Hiroshima and it was a really nice hotel with a gorgeous lobby and bar on the top floor overlooking the pretty city and mountains surrounding it. We dropped our luggage and immediately went over to the Peace Museum and Memorial. The museum was well done, but obviously very hard to see the pictures of all of those people suffering from the atomic bomb. Not only the immediate effects but also the lingering effects of the radiation on the people who survived. It was crazy to see how the force of the blast was able to bend metal and throw glass shards into stone embedding them in the walls. The whole museum and the town for that matter is all about peace, no more nukes, let’s not have this happen again. In the peace park they have this museum then lots of other memorials honoring the different groups of people who died there. A children’s memorial has lots of origami cranes making up chains of hope and different designs. The park was beautiful with all of the cherry blossoms in bloom which line the river. We continued to walk through the park stopping to honor the memorials along the way. Our next stop was Orizuru Tower, a 9 story high tower that you walk up, each floor has an artist mural on the wall. We had a quest to answer the questions about each mural as we were going up. On the 8th floor we stopped to learn how to make our own origami crane. It was hard, I had to ask for additional help twice! Paul was pretty good at this, he said all of his paper airplane making in his past forged the way for him! Continuing up to the top floor, which was floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city. There was a small bar so we of course grabbed a drink to sit and look out on the gorgeous view. We were lucky because it wasn’t crowded at all. I had more items on my self-guided tour, but the boys wanted to get back to the hotel and chill for a bit, so we made it back in time for Knot Hour-happy hour. We got some snacks and drinks and sat in the rooftop bar for a bit, then took a rest before heading out to dinner. I had reservations at a Yakinuki restaurant, which is a meat restaurant where you cook your own food over a coal fire on your table. I was really looking forward to this place because it’s one of the few types of food I can eat here. Unfortunately, they served very different types of meat than we are used to, some of which were so chewy, I literally could not chew them. No knives and forks here so we couldn’t rely on them. They served us tongue and intestines and heart and so many other things that we couldn’t read or the translation was just off, that we didn’t eat. We all agreed the tiny salad was the best thing all night! It was such a disappointment, and unfortunately a waste of food and money! That was our most expensive dinner so far and none of us liked it. Not sure if we are just picky, or what, because this place had a lot of good reviews.