Peace Memorial Park
Many people know Hiroshima for only one thing: the atom bomb that was dropped during WWII. It’s such a big part of the city’s history I decided we would start our visit there and work north towards the castle.
Alice and I left the hotel at 0915 by bus. Arriving at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the queue was estimated to be over an hour. We thought we would wander through the Peace Memorial Park’s other sites before returning later.
The park was dotted with various monuments dedicated to various segments of the population, eg. children, students, Korean workers etc. At the far end from where we had started, we could see that the queue for the museum was now even longer. I thought we could fit it in later today or tomorrow, time-permitting.
We crossed the bridge to the Atomic Bomb Dome. This iconic ruin was the Product Exhibition Hall designed by a Czech architect, before left in this state in 1945. Here, we found a boat service from here to Miyajima Island and made a booking for early tomorrow morning to coincide with the high tide.
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- Queue for the Peace Memorial Museum.
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- The park is dotted with many memorials to different segments of society.
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- The Atomic Bomb Dome.
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- The Atomic Bomb Dome.
Okonomiyaki but not as we know it
We continued to the city centre for lunch, specifically to find the Hiroshima version of okonomiyaki. Okonomimura (okonomiyaki village) was supposed to be a good place with countless stalls spread over several floors. Strangely, some stalls were packed while others were quiet.
We chose one at random. The Hiroshima okonomiyaki is noodle-based rather than with the normal batter. We were both a tad disappointed that the noodle was plain rather than fried with seasoning before being formed lightly into a cake and topped with egg and sauce. I guess as Malaysians, we expected it to be fried with sauces so that it would be bursting with flavour like mee goreng.
There is also a thin batter-like base to help keep its form, especially when being shifted from the hotplate to the customer’s plate.
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- At the okonomiyaki bar.
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- Okonomiyaki but not as we know it. The local version uses noodles instead of a batter.
Hiroshima Castle
After some after-lunch window-shopping, we continued to Hiroshima Castle. The climb up wasn’t a big deal as we stopped at each level to look at the exhibits before getting to the lookout at the top.
The city’s skyline wasn’t dramatic enough for a wow experience and we weren’t high enough to see further afield. The most interesting about the visit was probably the local holly trees that survived the atomic bombs.
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- Moat around the castle.
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- These holly trees survived the atomic bomb.
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- Hiroshima castle.
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- View from Hiroshima castle.
Back in the town centre, Alice bought a pair of shoes. We didn’t find what we felt like for dinner and were still somewhat full. We ended up getting some anago (conger eel or sea eel) nigirizushi from a supermarket to eat in our rooms.
I also got an apple for over NZD2 but it was only so so. Alice had bought a pricier one from a posher supermarket and reported it to be good.
Today was meant to be an easy chilled day. But our personalities are such that we filled it right up with walking and activities, albeit at a slow pace. We returned to our rooms around 1800. I concluded my day in the hotel onsen as I found it makes me sleep very well.