I woke up pretty early and no one was awake, so I ended up walking around the area by myself. I found out that almost every parking garage had Batman technology – equipped with a spinning base and vehicle elevator! Hunger kind of set in and luckily there was an awesome bakery near our hotel, One Coin Bakery. I dropped by to refuel, headed off in a different direction and found an outdoor mini mall.
Here’s the hotel we stayed at, Hiroshima Kokusai Hotel. Check out our backyard!
After I got back from my morning walk, I took the rest of the gang back to the bakery. Yeah, I had a second breakfast. The lady who served me early remembered me and had ultra smiles when she saw that I brought more people.
Atomic Bomb Dome
After breakfast, we all got ready for walking around. Just a short ride over and we stopped at the Atomic Bomb Dome. The structure stands as a memorial to those who lost their lives on August 6, 1945. I can’t say how many times I got chills down my spine and most of the time my mind was going a million miles a second about the idea of what happened about 65 years ago.
Little did I know that there was an entire park, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, in the surrounding area, so we all walked around.
The Hall of Remembrance
After splitting up for a while, we all met back up around the museum. I have almost all the plaques, but I’ll upload them later when I can piece them all side by side.
Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound
There was a huge open area just in front of the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound, so I made a panoramic.
Okonomiyaki, Hiroshima-style
We walked across the bridge and made our way to find some okonomiyaki, Hiroshima-style. This was an awesome meal nonetheless. Ray wanted to introduce this, “taco wasabi” to me and I couldn’t imagine what the hell it looked like. When it came out on a little dish, I realized when he said “taco”, it was really, “tako” – octopus. It hit my nose hard, but it was freaking delicious! I need to find a place in the states that serves this.
We made our way back to the hotel, did some last minute shopping, packed up and got ready for our long trek back to Tokyo.
[Japan Trip 2010 | Tokyo 1 | Kyoto 1 | Kyoto 2 | Hiroshima 1 | Hiroshima 2 | Tokyo 2 | Fuji Q]