Day Fifteen: Okinawa to Hiroshima

We flew into Hiroshima from Okinawa, and somewhere on the approach the captain hatched a new plan. He’d worked out a way to somewhat circumvent the typhoon that was chasing us. This typhoon, due to come ashore on exactly the day we were meant to leave Hiroshima, could pose some issues when it came to flying. So the scheme, devised mid-air, was elegant. Leave the plane in Hiroshima, drive from Hiroshima to Kyoto by car, and pick things up from there.

It was a good plan. It was, however, a plan that ran straight into a fundamental truth about this country. The Japanese are wonderfully, immovably inflexible, which left us with the firm notion that the plan stays the plan in Japan. Improvising your way around a schedule is simply not a category of thing that exists here. So much for outsmarting the weather.

Having accepted that we would be sticking to the original plan, we made our way into Hiroshima. After checking in we had a quick sushi lunch right there at the hotel before heading out, which turned out to be the right call. From the hotel we walked over to the atomic bomb museum, and it was busier than we expected, a real crowd of visitors from everywhere.

The museum itself stays measured and factual about the events. It lays out the before and the after, the city as it was and the city as it became in a single morning, alongside the personal things that survived when their owners did not. There is no editorialising and there doesn’t need to be. Ultimately you move through it, you look at the things, and you don’t say very much.

Then we walked over to the Dome, the skeletal building left standing near the hypocenter, preserved exactly as it was. It was originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, an exhibition building from 1915. The bomb detonated almost directly above it, so the blast came straight down through the centre rather than sideways, and the frame and the dome held while everything around it was flattened. It has been left in that state ever since.

Following the sightseeing we went back to the hotel and rested a bit, before wrapping the day up with a very good teppanyaki.

Day Sixteen: Hiroshima & Miyajima

The next morning we went to what Claude & ChatGPT both rank as the second most notable site in the area: Miyajima Island, officially Itsukushima, the island with the famous torii gate standing out in the water.

We started at the shrine and had a proper look around. Itsukushima Shrine is built out over the tidal zone on stilts, so depending on the water it either floats or stands in the mud, and the great red torii sits out beyond it. From there we took the cable car, the Miyajima Ropeway, up Mount Misen, then hiked the rest of the way to the summit. The whole way up there were groups of American tourists, clustered at every viewpoint and turn in the trail. Coming down, we decided against the easy option and hiked the whole mountain down on foot.

By then we’d earned lunch, which was quick, and the captain finally got his soft serve ice cream. After which we headed back to the hotel and wrapped things up with dinner there, everyone pleasantly worn out.