Hiroshima

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We took the train to Hiroshima and first visited Miyajima. It's good to try to time your visit with a high tide to experience the shrine and torii floating over water.

Itsukushima Shrine is the reason for Miyajima's fame (Miyajima means "shrine island"). The shrine, which is partially constructed over water and features the famous floating torii gate, dates back to the 6th century. The island is also quite unusual as it has all these very tame deer wandering about. We saw one particularly cheeky one jump up and try to grab a girl's icecream!! Daisho-in Temple is definitely worth a look: it is a charming Buddhist temple complex with numerous statues of various styles. We walked up to the top of Mount Misen, the highest point of the island, and from here, there is a great view to the mainland and out at the archipelago of islands.

After this we went to Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park. The park is a very poignant remembrance to the atomic bombing of WW2 and the museum is an extremely informative, emotive and impelling place...one of the highlights of our visit to Japan.

On August 6, 1945 the nuclear weapon Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima by Enola Gay, killing directly an estimated 80,000 people and completely destroying approximately 68% of the city's buildings. In the following months, an estimated 60,000 more people died from injuries or radiation poisoning.

After the nuclear attack, Hiroshima was rebuilt and the closest surviving building to the location of the bomb's detonation was designated the Atomic Bomb Dome, a part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Near the centre of the park is a concrete, arched monument that covers a Cenotaph holding the names of all of the people killed by the bomb. Through this monument you can see the Peace Flame and the A-Bomb Dome.

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