Days 9+10: Kyoto + Hiroshima

We traveled to Kyoto by train - taking the very comfortable bullet train, but it being a local we didn’t travel super fast. At over one million residents, Kyoto is a big city but tiny in comparison to Tokyo. It looks and feels much smaller, too. Most buildings in the area where we are staying - 20 minute walk from the Kyoto train station - are low rise, many looking like traditional Japanese homes, with tiled roofs and wooden screens in front.

After some initial shopping in the area, we ate dinner at a small casual restaurant where we stumbled through the menu using google translate. No English here but we had yet another great meal: shared omelets, two kinds of fried chicken and more.

The next day, Monday, Margot, Ben and I took the train to Hiroshima - the bullet train took one hour forty minutes. Every mode of transportation is precisely on time! We began our day with lunch, enjoying the local special: Okonomiyak, pancake bottomed creation topped with fish, meat and vegetables, with an optional egg (see photo).

We then visited the Hiroshima peace museum and park. As expected, it was impactful: informative and full of stories about the atomic bomb and aftermath. There were many paintings made by survivors - some 60 years later that were particularly moving. As we see everywhere, there are many touring schoolchildren, including at a memorial in the peace garden that was dedicated to a charismatic girl who died of leukemia a few years after the bomb. She made origami cranes, hoping to heal herself, and there are now hundreds of thousands of paper cranes in cases that are part of the memorial.

Returning to Kyoto we found a small nearby restaurant for wagu that we cooked on a grill built into the table, along with sake. Then to the local beer garden where we met up with the same delightful Japanese couple Eric, Ben and Matt had befriended the prior night.Les mer