Tuesday’s Hiroshima Travels

Tuesday morning was an early one and we were all up and ready to go by 4:30a. The train took us to a station where we transferred to the high speed rail line. A few of us grabbed some breakfast food at a convenience store shop in the station and ate while we waited for the train. I got a neat little bullet train bento box and some chicken Katsu sandwiches.

The train was already there, so we boarded and it soon took off. It felt like nothing special until I opened the Waze app and saw we were going 60 through town. It was so smooth and quiet. It soon sped up to 148mph which was the fastest as I saw it register on Waze the whole ride. There were some neat things we saw on the way.

I appreciated how the carpet along the center of the car looked like a stone walkway that had been raked. 

Also, we got a pretty decent view of Mt. Fuji (photo credit goes to Andy Stock)

The whole train would shake a little when we passed another bullet train going roughly the same speed. It was a little more than a 3-hr train ride from Tokyo to Hiroshima. Some people took that time to catch up on sleep.

After arriving in Hiroshima, we had some time to go eat before meeting to get our train tickets for later. We stopped at a place where we bought a food ticket in a vending machine and gave it to the kitchen to make your food. I got some tasty ramen. 

(Photo credit: Wendell Moser)

Afterwards, I got some doughnuts.

We met and got on a bus to see Hiroshima Castle. I didn’t allocate my time well here so I ended up skipping most of the displays on the way up so I could get to the top before we left. 

We all met back at the bus stop to catch a ride to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. 

The Peace Memorial was a government hall of some sort that was partially standing after the atomic bomb wiped out most of the town. I appreciated how they displayed the whole event as a lesson we (as a globe) must learn by never using these weapons again and promoting peace. After seeing the Peace Memorial, we went to a building that had been rebuilt on the outside, but told the story of a survivor in the basement and showed the building as it was post bomb drop on the inside.

After being there and grabbing an ice cream cone from a vending machine in the gift shop, we walked over to the Atomic Bomb History Museum. I want to say it was impressive, but it doesn’t seem to be the right word. Maybe profound + sobering? They had all kinds of exhibits detailing what happened, photos of the day, stories, artifacts like burned up shirts people were wearing, fused glass chunks from the heat, etc. etc. About halfway through I started feeling a little sick to my stomach. It was quite sobering and sad. After the main section, they covered details of the bombing from the US’s side and did it seemingly quite well.

Once we walked through that museum, we headed to the bus stop to go back to the station and take a train to a short ferry to the island where Itsukushima Shrine is. It’s a shrine built into the water along the coast. The main gate is out into the water a ways, but it was low tide when we visited, so the shrine didn’t look like it was floating. Because of the low tide, we were able to walk out to the gate. 

We split up a bit, after visiting the shrine, to do some shopping and got some random foods. One of which was seaweed and salt fries.

We ferried back to mainland with a good night view.

At the train station we grabbed some food before getting back on a bullet train with service to Himeji. Before getting on the train, I grabbed a hot chocolate from a vending machine. It was so neat getting a hot drink from a vending machine.

We got to Himeji and headed up to our Hostel. We learned the rules and got the keys to our room. A few of us headed out for food. We found a sushi place on Google maps that had good reviews.

They seemed excited to have Americans in their restaurant. It was the first time a few of us had sushi, so the staff were extra honored. We came back to the hostel and got ready for bed. I passed some of the other hostel beds coming back from the showers, but ours were more like built-in bunks.

Monday - Tokyo Tour Day

Wow, Monday was a long day full of adventure and walking. We started our morning meeting in the dining area at 8:30a. Our first destination was the corner 7-Eleven to grab some breakfast. (This is becoming a habit) We took a ride to Shinjuku Station again to get our tickets for the Sunday bus ride to Shioda and for our bullet train ride tomorrow. It was significantly more crowded today than yesterday. 

After getting the tickets, we went to see where we needed to get on the bus Sunday morning. While that was being confirmed, a few of us went and grabbed some snacks/souvenirs. Once we were all set, we navigated to Meiji Jingu, a shrine dedicated in 1920’s for the spirits of Emperor Meiji. Emperor Meiji was credited with doing a great job navigating the opening of Japan to the rest of the world and bringing Japan up to speed as an industrialized nation. 

We also visited a museum on the site. (Ayla, you probably would have loved the architecture as much as I did!) It is one of my favorite styles of building.

After spending quite some time going through the museum’s exhibits, we headed for some food. Rebekah found a pancake place to try. On the way there, I saw some cool buildings (Ayla, you need to come check them out).

The line was out the door and we had to wait for about 20 minutes or so to get a seat, but it was so worth it.

And yes, they are as cloudy and fluffy as they look. After the fantastic meal, we went to the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world — Shibuya Crossing. 

It’s basically just a normal intersection at a place that gets an enormous of traffic. There’s a train station exit at one corner that really helps increase the numbers. While it was chaotic, it still flowed very nicely and quickly. We crossed it multiple times before deciding to break into a few smaller groups and tour around the area. There were lots of shops and restaurants etc. to check out. It ended up being myself, Thad, Jalen, Derek, and Wendell who went around together. We went looking for Street food Vendors, but first got lured into a shop that used a robot to make soups. 

Next, we ran into a place that sold takoyaki so we stopped and tried some! (It contains octopus) Thadd was so brave to try it.

Finally we checked out another place for food before giving up and meeting the other group of brothers at a bookstore. 

We browsed a while before finally headed back to meet Ezra and Rebekah to discuss food. We decided to separate to get food again and meet back together to go to the Tokyo Tower. For dinner I had teriyaki chicken Fillet-O from McDonald’s 

We made it to the Tokyo Tower and spent the next hour and a half going up to the upper floor and getting pics of the never-ending sea of city lights. 

What a sight to behold — all those lights. There was even a large glass plate you could stand on and look straight down. We finally finished up and ventured back to the AirBnB slowly, as we were all pretty wiped out. We shared some of our snacks from the day before going to bed.