Blogs from Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan, Asia - page 2

Sunday, 23rd June 2019 So here I am back to the Land of Rising Sun - this time flying straight into Hiroshima Airport. I curated this trip to explore the Sanyo-Sanin Coast between Hakata and Himeji as far as the Shinkansen could bring me over the course of a week. My Silkair flight departed in the wee hours on Sunday, 23rd June 2019. Frankly, I wasn't expecting too much into this flight given that it used the single-aisle A320 series. I had paid about $600 for the tickets. The price was okay - nothing too unreasonable for the 7-hour journey. There was a 30kg luggage allowance and breakfast was served prior to landing. I managed to grab some sleep on my comfortable emergency row seat even though it did not allow for a reclining position. After ... read more

Dear All Greetings from Hiroshima! After a blissful few days off the beaten tourist track on the island of Shikoku, I have returned once more to the tourist trail. But this feels very different to Kyoto, with many more Japanese tourists here. It also just feels a bit different here – I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I feel the people here seem a little feistier, hardier, than I’ve seen in other places. There are some really friendly people, but this doesn’t always seem the case, and compared to other places so far where everyone greets you in a lift, for example, not everyone does so here. I wonder if it’s just the way people are here, or I do indeed wonder if in fact the memories from 1945, some anti-western sentiments, still continue ... read more

Brett woke this morning feeling very poorly. Some type of alien man-flu, only clearly much worse. However, being the samurai that he now is (given he has a knife) he soldiered on so the holiday could continue as planned. After a quick breakfast, we caught a taxi to nishiki market. A large under-cover area much like the central market in Adelaide only with octopus ice blocks and some other weird things that I'm not sure what they actually were. We will examine the photos under the microscope when we get home with the aid of a forensic expert to see if we can work out what we were looking at. As always, despite the weirdness of some things, everything was beautifully presented and looked so good. We dawdled through the market for a while before coming ... read more

Today we travel to Hiroshima. As we wait outside the hotel for our taxi we see a group of girls walk past along the footpath in single file, on their way to work. There is perfectly even spacing between them, and they are all identically dressed. They look like robots. We don’t think they’re too keen on individualism here in Japan. We've rarely seen anyone wearing outlandish clothes, or with unusual hairstyles, or even behaving unusually. Everyone just seems happy to conform and fit in. We decide to have breakfast at the station. I’m still hungry after last night‘s tofu hamburger fiasco, and I suggest to Issy that we have breakfast at McDonald's. She knows that I hate McDonald's, so she assumes that I’m joking. I assure her that I’m perfectly serious, and then add that ... read more

Haïku du jour Soleil couchant La grenouille aussi Est en larmes (Kobayashi Issa) Poursuite du périple sur Honshu de Kyoto à Hiroshima avant d'embarquer demain pour Shikoku 9h à Matsue nous prenons en sens inverse le train qui nous a amenés de Okayama par la vallée de la rivière Takahashi. Bref panorama du Mont Daïzen enneigé entre deux montagnes verdoyante croqué sur mon carnet. Puis en shinzansen d'Okayama à Hiroshima où nous arrivons vers 13h. Première visite pour le Parc de la Paix à l'épicentre de l'explosion de la bombe atomique qui a tué 140 000 personnes le 6 mai 1945. Seul vestige conservé et qui n'avair pas été complètement rasé, le palais des expositions du ministère de l'industrie signe le devoir de mémoire. Sinon le parti pris du site est tourné vers l'avenir et l'espoir ... read more