Blogs from Hiroshima, Japan, Asia - page 2

Saturday, 29th June 2019 Before heading to Hiroshima in the afternoon, I made a brief stop at the town of Tatsuno. This is home to Japan's only Soy Sauce Museum. Access to Tatsuno is relatively straight forward with frequent trains departing from Himeji throughout the day. Getting to the museum from the train station included a brief 25 minutes walk along the old town thoroughfare complete with a bridge crossing. Housed within an atmospheric brick building dating back from the previous century, the museum charged a symbolic 10 yen entry fee and it was manned by a really friendly elderly lady. I probably spent about 30 minutes in the cosy museum and there were some English translations available for non-Japanese speakers like me. The weather was unforgiving when my train pulled into JR Hiroshima Station for ... read more

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

On the heels of yesterday’s professionally guided sightseeing around Hiroshima, today we decided to add a self-guided tour of Hiroshima castle. The travel company had booked our train tickets for early morning to go to Okayama. However, last night we changed the Shinkansen tickets to late afternoon and took ourselves off to Hiroshima castle. Before leaving the hotel we forwarded two suitcases to Kobe and kept just the items we thought we would need for two days before we got to Kobe. We decided to use the Hiroshima Loop Bus system. There are three routes around the city. The bus station was opposite the hotel. So onto the bus we got and made our stop the castle. The castle is an impressive five storey pagoda shaped building. The castle is built on a stone base of ... read more

After a night of sailing through the inner Sea of Japan we arrived at a very wet Hiroshima. Having been to the Peace Park before, which is excellent if you come here, we decided to take the ferry across to Miyajima Island. The journey only takes 10 minutes and they are very efficient at loading and unloading. The first thing you see is the large red torii gate which rises up out of the sea. It is bright red to chase away any evil spirits. It was built in 1875 to replace a previous one. Behind it is the large beautiful Itsukushima Shrine which is lovely to walk through. It is guarded by the two lions one open mouthed saying "Aah" as a baby would shout at birth and the other one closed mouthed saying "Mmm" ... 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