Friday June 29th Hiroshima --> miyajima --> Hiroshima (day 3)

We spent today with my host aunty Aya, she was part of my 7^th host family the Matsuzakis while on my exchange, but she has since gotten married and now lives in Hiroshima. I got my times a little confused and thought we were meant to be meeting her at 9 so we were up and at the place we were meeting her , 9 came and went so I went to check the email to grab her phone number to call and see what was happening when I realized that we were only meant to be meeting at 10, so we crossed the river an wandered through the peace park again. We found a small memorial hall which I had not previously been to which lists the known names of people who died as a result of the A-bomb, many of the bodies were never identified, so this acts as a mass grave of sorts for the surviving families to visit.

Back to where we met up with Aya and waited for a bit, until she arrived.  Together we caught a small boat out to miyajima island,  once there we took a few photos with the deer, one of which tried to eat Krish shirt. Silly deer. We  were lucky enough to see the tori gate up close as the tide was out and you could walk right up to it… something that I had not seen on my previous visits to the island.  

We were also very lucky to see a wedding taking place inside the temple.

After viewing the pagoda, wandering through the temple, a few souvenir shops, where one shop assistant gave me a 100yen discount because “you speak great Japanese for  a foreigner”  we had lunch in a very quaint restaurant, I had tonkatsu (something I have yet to be able to find done well in Australia) and Krish had katsukari. (one of the foods I get a lot at Japanese restaurant’s in Australia.)

Following this we went up the mountain in the ropeway before continuing to the summit on foot. Little bit crazy of us to have done it in the middle of the day, but the view was worth it.

Upon returning from the mountain we tried momiji manjyu a local delicacy,… which was pretty much a cake sort of thing filled with either chocolate or anko (red bean paste).

We then returned to Hiroshima for dinner with Aya and meet up with her husband sou at the restaurant, we ate for 2 hours straight and they just kept ordering more food! All of which was very nice, good thing we did so much exercise earlier in the day to counteract it all.

Over the dinner discussion they decided that I’m more Japanese than Australian on account of the fact that I have only been to Sydney twice yet this is my 4^th time to visit Hiroshima.

Seeing Aya again was great, but it was very hard to say goodbye again at the end of it tonight.

Thursday June 28th Osaka --> Hiroshima (day 2)

This morning we took the easy way out an had breakfast at maccas, but it was different to Australian maccas, they do mc griddles rather than muffins, the buns are much sweeter and I think had sultanas in them.  You also can’t get shakes at breakfast time.

After checking out we made our way Osaka castle station where we met Minami, a friend I made at school while I was on exchange in 2009.  Together with her we went to Osaka castle and then to lunch at an Okonomiyaki restaurant.  Okonomiyaki is one of my favourite Japanese foods and it is different in each region of Japan, so I will be trying to eat it in each region.  After that we caught the shinkansen (bullet train) down to Hiroshima.

Here in Hiroshima we are staying in a really nice hotel that overlooks the peace park, and A-bomb dome, so we had to catch a tram here from the main station, while it is a fair distance from the train station it is a very convenient location as it is next to the peace park and only  5 minutes walk from where we will be catching the ferry to miyajima island.

Tonight we went for a walk and found the main shopping street and had some dinner there, I also found an 8 floor 100yen shop (every thing is  105yen (with taxes)  which is about $1.50) I was really surprised at myself when I only walked out of there with 2 things, tissues and some wrapping paper for the presents we brought with us.

We also went for a wander through the peace park which we will be going back to later, but we all know how much I love night photography… just wish I had my big tripod with me, but it would have been a bit of a pain to pack regardless I managed to get a few decent  shots.

Wednesday June 27th Brisbane --> Osaka (day 1)

This morning we got up and packed repacked our bags before walking to the airport and checking in at 7, we then returned to the YHA to take advantage of the free breakfast offered to us and check out and then once again walked to the airport. Upon arriving at the airport I realized that the battery in my watch had died. The flight was pretty good, nice food and what not, part way through Krish was adjusting his headrest and it fell off so we had to move seats, just something a little bit interesting to brighten up the trip.

Upon arriving in Japan we cleared immigration and collected our bags without much of a wait. Finding the JR ticket office was a little bit of a challenge, as my map said 3^rd floor, but in the airport building the 3^rd floor was a food court, turns out that is was on the 3^rd floor of the train station. After asking for help and finding the ticket office we got our JR passes and did the first few of our booking, I didn’t do them all as there was a line behind us and it was getting late, and I knew we still had an hour on the trains plus about a 20min walk to get to our hotel.

The train trip to JR namba went well including the transfer which I was a little uncertain about, but then finding our hotel once we got out of the station was a bit of a challenge, the issue there is that most train stations have multiple exits and if you dint take the right one the instructions which you have to get you where you want to go will be completely useless.

We found our hotel with out to much confusion though, and checked in fine, I had to ask for the package that had been posted to the hotel for us, but once I asked it was produced for us very quickly,… the package was our pocket wifi that we have hired for our time here.

This hotel room is rather nice, it would want to be considering how much we paid for just 1 night, its our most expensive room the whole trip.

After dropping our bags in the room we went for a walk to find some dinner, and to explore dotonburi.