Published: 2025-05-24
Hi!
I meant to post this on the way back from Hiroshima for days 11 and 12 but well, I got distracted in all the hoopla of travel and such. So here we are, as a wrap-up of the last few days in Japan.
So where did we leave off? Hiroshima. The day after we first arrived in Hiroshima we did a bus tour starting from the train station with our first stop being the A-bomb dome that we had visited the night before. Heather said (and I fully agree) that she was grateful that we had gone the night before... not only had it been less busy, but the lightning on the structure made for a much more impactful experience.
After a quick stop at the dome, we visited the Children's Peace Monument where we learned about the tragic story of Sadako Sasaki, a little girl who survived the bombing but died from the leukemia she developed 10 years later. Japanese culture says that if you create one thousand paper cranes, a wish will be granted to you. Sadako completed over 1,000 paper cranes but her wish to survive was never granted. The monument was erected in 1958 to honour Sadako and the other children who perished in the bombing and at the base of the monument is a marble slab that reads:
This is our cry, this is our prayer: for building peace in the world
We made our way from this monument to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and had one of the heaviest learning experiences ever, outside of the Holocaust Museum I visted in high school. Needless to say, I didn't take any photos but the images and the personal accounts will stay with me forever.
With the heavy subjects of the morning now finished, we boarded the bus again and after a moment of silence and prayer on the bus we departed for the happier and sunnier part of the bus tour - Miyajima. We drove south along the west coast of Hiroshima Bay to the ferry terminal to catch our lift to the island.
Once across the water, we headed to lunch to try Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki at Okonomiyaki Momochan. It's a type of Japanese cuisine that layers ham, shredded cabbage, ramen noodles, fried egg, and cheese into a 'pancake' and it was very, very tasty. There is an Osaka-style version as well which omits the noodles and mixes everything up into a more traditional 'pancake' but we never had the opportunity to try that version.
Miyajima holds a shrine that is located over the water (at high tide), with an iconic Torii gate in the tidal flats that you can walk up to during low tide. We got there at middle tide while it was going out, so we were able to walk (nearly) all the way to it and got some photos. I swear that the herons are all paid actors here as one of them flew up into the outrushing tide and stayed in a picturesque location and pose for far longer than any bird ought to have with so many people around.
Miyajima also has deer on the island, but they don't bow to you like they do in Nara. You're also not supposed to feed them, but they don't know that or respect that fact... our guide, Momiji, referred to the deer as 'ninja deer' since they seem to appear out of thin air to try and steal people's food as they're sitting.
Speaking of Momiji, our guide was named after the Japanese Maple tree, which is also the symbol of Hiroshima. There is a type of desert that Hiroshima that is also called Momiji and they are little cakes shaped like maple leaves that have a tasty filling inside, usually made from red bean paste (don't knock the paste, it's delicious and not too sweet).
After spending a few hours on Miyajima we met up with our group and caught the ferry back to the mainland. On the ride back, I spotted a pod of dolphins swimming perpendicular to our path... I was worried we would run right into them, but instead they swam right up to us and then followed our boat! There was even a few babies along with their parents. I stole a screen capture of the video that Michelle took since all my photos were out of focus or just a moment too slow to catch a good group of them breaching out of the water.
The day finished up in Hiroshima and I hit up 7-Eleven (my beloved) for some more tasty beef udon on the way back to our Airbnb.
The next day was our return trip to Tokyo via the Shinkansen again, total travel time around 4 hours or so. The infrastructure in Japan is so amazing and so well laid out, the fact that we could manage the entirety of our trip without setting foot inside a personal vehicle makes me so incredibly envious.
We checked back into the same hotel that we'd been in for the first few days near Higashi-Nurume station and met up with Michelle's friend Nash for some amazing Indian food, including the largest naan bread that I have ever laid eyes on.
I don't know if it's all of the walking or maybe it's the ingredients but food in Japan just hits different, both in the tastiness department and the glucose levels. Despite the ramen and the udon and the gyoza and the naan (and even the rice), my glucose levels were bizarrely stable (with some minor exceptions here and there). If I'd had the same diet in North America, I'd probably have been hospitalized or something.
Anyways, our final days in Tokyo were spent just mulling around and making sure all of our loose ends were tied up and that we weren't forgetting anything or missing out on anything that we'd wanted to do. It was pretty mundane stuff, like hitting up the Ito Yokado to make sure we had snacks and supplies and cool things from the Daiso to bring home. We had gone to Don Quijote in Hiroshima and gotten some souvenirs for friends back home, which was an experience - a friend of mine likened it to going to a dollar store inside a rave, and you know what, I think that's a pretty excellent description. IYKYK.
On the 22nd we said our goodbyes and Heather and I made our way back to Narita airport. It's crazy how simple the process was now that we'd spent 2 weeks using the Japanese transit network and also weren't running on 24 hours of no sleep. With our swanky seats, we got to enjoy the premium lounge at NRT which included an open bar and a soft-serve ice cream station (which I sadly did not partake in).
What an incredible trip - which is the understatement of the century.
