Hiroshima

Sitting in the hotel lobby , no wireless or wired access in my room here in Hiroshima. So this might be abit short, depending on how fast I can type.

1 Day in Hiroshima seems to be abit on the short side. I basically had time to check out the atom bomb museum, park, memorials etc aswell as Hiroshima Castle. There's tons more to see though, including a manga library that I now missed -.- . Sucks to be me... The atom bomb stuff is fairly extensive, and suffice to say rather depressive and bleak too, Nagasaki's museum feels rather small when you compare it to the one here. The park and surrounding stuff along with the atom bomb dome are also far larger, and there's more monuments here than in Nagasaki. The museum feels abit repetitive, there's a few places where the same stuff is repeated, on the other hand there's more momentos and pieces of clothes and personal belongings, mostly from children that are on display. And there's a whole video library with interviews with survivors, incase you're a real masochist and like breaking down into tears.

Aside from that, the Castle was abit of a letdown. While the atom bomb museum cost 50 yen, which almost feels like a rather symbolic gesture, the Castle was almost 300 yen and you get both less museum and content, especially if you're english. There's some signs but not all the stuff has been labeled and many things like the extensive sword collection will prolly bore normal people. Because of the bomb though the actual castle was destroyed so this is basically a nicelooking relatively new replica. Anyhow, from the castle grounds the thing you'll most likely remember if you were to visit it is the eucalyptus tree at the entrance, one of those trees that essentially survived the bomb only to live on, even today.

The rest of the town is pretty nice, there's a large shopping street with a roof, akin to the one in Asakusa, but with more intresting shops, really abit of something for everyone, going from computer parts and whole computers to the usual Hip hop clothes and record stores and about 30 varieties of the Starbucks coffee place. There's also both a Mitsukoshi and some other large stores so if you really feel like spending money that too is quite possible. Anyways the shinkansen doesn't wait, I'm off towards Shin Osaka station, from where I'll hopefully get to whereever my next hostel is. Aparently there's a Japanese style room waiting for me there. Should be fun.