South by Shinkansen

Asia » Japan » Hiroshima
August 24th 2006

Published: August 26th 2006

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The Travelling Twines

Hiroshima Castle

Awesome photo taken by a very friendly local!!

We are currently on holidays for a couple of weeks and it's absolutley fantastic!!! Have already done heaps of stuff and we'll be doing heaps more in the next 5 days we still have off, so thought we'd update our trip down south by the shinkansen!!

Last Thursday (17th) Eddie, Valerie, Cameron and I set of for four days down in south Japan. We took the Shinkansen (aka Bullet Train). There are actually 3 types of Shinkansen - the Kodama (kind of local bullet train ie the slowest), the Hikari (express train - faster than Kodama) and then the Nozomi (THE fastest). Last year we took the Kodama down to Kyoto, this past week Cam and I took the Nozomi down to Hiroshima and then travelled back to Shin-Yokohama by Hikari. So we can now say we have travelled on all types of Shinkansen - very cool!!

Enough about trains though.........

Thursday and Friday we were in Hiroshima. On the Thursday we visited Hiroshima Castle, which was so beautiful - climbed all the way to top to catch the view and it was........not spectacular, but the breeze from the top cooled us down nicely!!
Then we walked over

Shinkansen Trip

Anpanman's trip to Hiroshima!

to the A-Bomb Domb - just incredible.

That night we found an awesome Okonomi Yaki restaurant. The staff were so friendly and the food was just sooooooo delicious. Okonomi Yaki is described as a kind of Japanese pancake, with a thin layer of egg top and bottom and a mixture of cabbage, meat, fish and yaki soba (fried noodles) in the middle. Ooishi!!!! Afterwards we introduced Eddie and Valerie to the joy that is karaoke!!!

Friday it was a wet day, but we still went over to Miyajima Is to see the Itsukushima Shrine and the famous red Torrii out in the water. The rain wasn't all that bad - it actually made the moutains on the island look so beautiful. It also kept the thousands of deer that inhabit the island at bay. Miyajima Is is a must see for anyone travelling down south of Japan and we can say that it's also enjoyable in the rain!!

Late afternoon we went to the Peace Memorial Park. We saw the Children's Peace Monument, the Cenotaph, the Flame of Peace and then we just managed a visit to the Peace Memorial Museum. All very moving and though-provoking memorials.

Cam the Samurai!!

Dress-ups inside Hiroshima Castle.

That night we just had to head back to our favourite Okonomi Yaki restaurant - we now say "Okonomi YUMMY"

Saturday we caught the Hikari Shinkansen up to Okayama (only about an hour away). It was so incredibly hot and humid that day. Cam and I have been whinging about being so pastey white, but now we can say that we have a bit more colour from the time spent in the sun.

We visited Okayama Castle, Okayama-joo (U-joo to the locals), known as the "crow castle". It was very striking with it's black colour and we did the tour of the inside (which luckily included a lift ride for part of the trip to the top!). From the top we looked out over to the Kooraku-en Garden, one of the three finest gardens in all of Japan. After our trip to the castle we wandered through the beautiful garden and it was indeed "fine".

Our fantastic hotel in Okayama (the Mitsui Garden Hotel) included a kind of "Onsen", hot baths for guests, so that afternoon Eddie, Valerie and I enjoyed these baths, while Cam had a snooze. Being 'traditional' Japanese baths they were therefore separated

A-Bomb Dome

into Male and Female rooms. It was so relaxing and just what we all needed after a long day of walking around Okayama.

We caught up with Eddie and Valerie's friend Niki, who lives near Okayama. We went to a delicious Izakaya (Japanese style bar/restaurant) near the hotel. It was lovely to meet Niki after hearing about him for a long time. We had great evening out together!!

The next day was again, sooooooo hot!! So, we headed to the shopping centre up the road for some airconditioning. In the afternoon we caught the Hikari Shinkansen back to Shin-Yokohama and then it was just a half hour trip on our local train to our place in Yabe. It was a wonderful trip away.

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