Kobe - Hiroshima

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Kobe is a smaller city compared to Osaka, built on a narrow strip of land between the mountains and sea. My time there was relaxing - I planned my time there to take it slow and see the few sights of interest. The hostel was in a bit of a strange neighborhood. There was a mix of residences, big commercial/industrial buildings and sake breweries. My hostel was on the second floor above an auto garage and right next door to what appeared to be a distribution warehouse for some kind of delivery company. The place itself was nice though. Very quiet, only a couple of other people were there. Kobe has a nice port area with some green space around a maritime museum and the Kobe tower. So I walked around there for a while. There was also a small chinatown, which wasn't especially interesting. Later in the evening after dark, I went up one of the mountains in a cable car. The view from there was incredible. The whole Osaka bay area was light up.

I was able to sleep in the next day since I was taking an overnight bus to Hiroshima. I didn't have much to do that day, so I took my time getting up. In the afternoon I visited a couple of the sake breweries nearby for some tastings and bought a couple of small bottles. From there I just sat around in the dorm until around 5:00, when I got on a train for Osaka, where the bus departed from. I walked around the Osaka station area for a bit, got some chicken katsu curry for dinner and found some ways to kill time until midnight. The bus wasn't especially comfortable, but it was comfortable enough. I was able to get a few hours sleep by the time we arrived in Hiroshima at around 6:30am.

It would be an hour or so before I could drop my bag off a the J-Hoppers hostel where I am staying, so I took my time and walked part of the way there before hopping on a streetcar which took me to the A-bomb dome and peace park. The A-bomb dome is an incredible place, but difficult to describe. Great care had been taken to preserve the dome exactly the way it was after the atomic bomb was detonated almost directly above it.

I had picked up a sandwich for breakfast on my way so I found a nice spot in the park to eat. I was only a few minutes away from the hostel by then, so I went over and dropped off my bags, took a shower and got ready to head to Miyajima. I had planned to see Miyajima the second day in Hiroshima, but I moved it to then because there was a chance of rain, which of course turned out to be accurate since it is raining as I write this. Miyajima is probably one of my favorite places so far. I got there about noon on the tram and ferry. It was fairly crowded with tourists, but not overcrowded. Several deer were roaming around, but there weren't as many around the populated area as there were in Nara. The big shrine, Itsukushima, right on the water was fairly crowded, but it was still nice. The "floating" gate was beautiful, and so were the long red lacquered halls. Luckily it was a high tide when I got there so everything was on the water instead of mud. My favorite place, however, was the Buddhist Daisho-in temple. This temple was a bit farther back into the island, and apparently not on the main tourist circuit, which was very nice. I could only see a few other people at any time. The temple has countless statues and several nice buildings. There is are two rooms, each with a thousand hundred little (about a 8-10 inches tall) statues. Another cave, although I wouldn't describe it as a cave, more a basement, under one of the buildings had a collection of at least 70-80 slightly larger statues/icons. Overall, I thought it was a great place.

At the foot of the temple is one of the trails up to the top of Mt. Misen. I decided to hike up since it was still early in the day. The hike was a lot more strenuous than I had been expecting. The main problem was the sheer number of steps. I'm still curious how they got the granite blocks and concrete for the path up there. Had it been mostly sloped, I think I would have fared better. About two hours and several breaks later I made it to the top. The view was great, but I don't know if it was worth all the stairs. Almost at the top was a small shrine and at the summit was an observatory building, which had good views of the whole Hiroshima area and surrounding islands. The summit is 535m, about 1750 feet. The path up was only 2.5 km long, but most of it was fairly steep. On the way down, I decided to take the ropeway, to save what remained of my feet. Back at sea level, I walked back to the town area for some lunch. On the way I passed by what is apparently the worlds largest wooden rice scoop. I had lunch in an okonomiyaki shop, Hiroshima style. Hiroshima style, compared to Osaka style okonomiyaki has less of the batter and is instead filled with chinese style noodles. Both styles are good. I will probably have it again sometime in the next day or two.

Today, I only had until the early afternoon before the rain was supposed to start, so I walked up to a small temple, Mitaki temple, about a 40 minute walk towards the mountains. Mitaki was nice and quiet, like Daisho-in on Miyajima, but on a smaller scale. Aside from that, I'm taking it easy, avoiding the rain at the hostel and figuring out what to do tomorrow.

I've uploaded a few photos from my collection so far.
See them here

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