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.