However, due to the less-than-satisfactory sleeping conditions, Grace woke up much earlier than usual, and dragged me out of bed as well. So we decided to take an earlier train instead. Mad rush to the platform without grabbing any breakfast as the next Shinkansen was barely a few minutes away. So there were two pathetic tourists munching on cheese-biscuits and oat-biscuits on the train.
By the time we got to Hiroshima (less than an hour away from Hakata), there were lots of caucasian tourists around. Some of them had American accent and I secretly wondered if it was meant to be a repentence trip or something..-_-"
The tourist information lady was very helpful, and recommended the same restaurants that I had planned for; and since we had no breakfast, we decided to go straight for food and sight-seeing later. But we got to the Sun Mall too early, and the mall was not open yet, so we wandered around until we saw the carb-laden Mr Dounut (something we both stay away from adamantly) promoting some new cream-filling pastry. We decided to give it a try, and it was surprisingly good and rather cheap at 80 yen each (about a dollar). When the mall finally opened, we found that the Okonomiyaki restaurant won't open until half an hour later (again). We tried to shop but didn't find anything really appealing, but managed to waste enough time for the restaurant to open. It was a long wait but it was worth it.
The Hiroshima style okonomiyaki is different from the Osaka version we had earlier in Canal City Hakata. The ingredients are not pre-prepared in the kitchen but rather cooked right before you on the mega teppan, and it had lots of veg, prawns, squid, meat and soba noodle in it. The rather young chef settled a layer of pancake first, then pan-fried the veg, before topping the seafood and the meet, and finally adding an egg and a layer of cheese that we ordered additionally. The end product was surprisingly huge and absolutely delicious. Grace had the recommended cabbage-based one while I opted for the more exciting spring onion-based one, and both were equally delicious.
After brunch we walked to the Peace Park. The most prominent structure there was the half-demolished dome, a building that used to be a government office and which miraculously survived the A-bomb blast with the hypocenter a mere 160 metres away. It was specially preserved to serve as a memorial of the terrible tragedy. More monuments, more fountains, and legions of fat, ugly pigeons that seemed to symbolize more of gluttony and stupidity than peace. According to reviews, the Hiroshima version of the A-Bomb museum was even more graphic than the Nagasaki one, so Grace refused to go anywhere near it.
We headed towards the Hiroshima castle, and passed by the city museum where the regional selection for the summer high-school baseball championship was held, and there were crowds of schoolkids in uniforms that were waiting to get in and cheer their school teams on, and we could hear the drumrolls, cheering and screamings from the outside. Must be quite a feat to run around the whole place with sun blazing and temperature at 35 degrees celsius.
Subsequently we went into the Martial Arts hall, where the regional Judo competition was taking place, and we had an entertaining half-hour session watching the little ones (some looked like they're barely 4) wrestling with each other with surpringsly good techniques.
Then it was another long walk to the Hiroshima Castle, and we only managed to snap a few pictures of it from afar as the main building was simply too far away. We rewarded ourselves with a can of ice-cold pepsi max and some icecream on the way back to the station, for all the walking that we've done for the day (we walked through almost half the Hiroshima city), grabbed some interesting red-bean white-bean buns from the station shop, and boarded the train bound for Miyajima.
Miyajima was one of Japan's 3 most famous places of scenery, boasting of a gigantic "floating" Bird Rest which was build in the sea and appeared to be floating when the tide is hgih. We went there when the tide was relatively low though, so the sight was not nearly as breathtaking as I had anticipated. There were plenty of deers roaming on the Miyajima island as well, and as usual we saw some of the greedy ones chasing after tourists and trying to munch on their clothes and bags...disgusting. With the thunder rumbling in the distance, we decided to head back early, and ran all the way to catch the departing ferry back to the mainland.
On the way back I had planned for a meal at Ueno, a famous restaurant for Anago (unagi-rice); but it was full and the waiting time was 30-minutes. So we opted for a bento instead (1470yen) and got on the train bound for Hiroshima. Embrassingly, we got off at Nishi-Hiroshima instead, and we didn't notice that we were at the wrong station until we had climbed a flight of stairs and were heading to the gantry. So we had to wait for the next local train to get to Hiroshima, and from there on, a Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka. As we couldn't get a reserved seat (all reserved seats are fully taken), we had to wait at the platform for nearly 20 minutes in order to get a seat in the free-seating section, an excruciatingly long wait in the heat. At Last, thank God, we got our seats and settled down to enjoy the already-cold bento, which was still great tasting but would have been even better had it been warm.
Osaka station was crowded and messy as usual, and while waiting for the local train we saw a lady who apparently fainted and landed flat on her face. It was a loud crash and I initially thought someone dropped his luggage, but there were gasps all around us as the station staff rushed to attend to her, who could not get up but convulsed on the floor, which looked really scary. When she got on her knees, there was a small pool of blood on the floor, and the lady beside was frantically trying hand her some tissue paper but all of them were soaked through within seconds. We couldn't see her face, but from the look of it and the amount of blood, it certainly would not have been a pleasant sight. Soon the train came and we squeezed on along with everyone else.
It was a long, long walk from JR Namba station to our hotel, Dormy Inn Shinsaibashi. We got lost after nearly 30 minutes of trying to find our way, and ended up at the police station barely one lane away from our hotel. We took JR as we were on JR pass and we wanted to save money by not taking the more convenient (in this case) Midosuji subway, which would have costed 230 yen per person. It was already rather late then, so we grabbed some food from the Family Mart below the hotel, soaked in the hot springs for a while (not as satisfactory as the Kumamoto one with outdoor onsens), and turned in.
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