We woke up late (for us) at 6am and were pleasantly surprised that our soreness had gone down by about 50% (it's back up again but it took all day to get there!). We felt like experts as we hopped on a train heading towards Fushimi Inari (10,000 Gates) and we were in photo-op heaven! I wish we could have stayed in that area a little longer, because it was such a cute area and no shops open until at least 10:30 or 11am, but we had a bullet train to Hiroshima to catch so we had to kind of hustle.
We stopped feeling like train experts right around the time we hopped on the wrong train, ended up in Osaka, and the machines quit taking our JR Pass. Luckily, we got back on track (no pun intended) and finally arrived in Hiroshima.
My first thought when we arrived in Hiroshima was how much more modern this city is compared to even Tokyo. Then you remember why and it makes your heart skip a beat. We checked into our itty bitty hotel with the hardest mattresses known to mankind, and then immediately set off in the direction of the Atomic Dome.
Brief history lesson: On August 6th, 1945 the US dropped the first of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima leveling the city and killing an estimated 140,000 people. One can make the argument that it ended the war, thus saving millions of other lives but when you see first hand artifacts and accounts from that day all you can think is 'WE did that.' It humbled and saddened me and if all the nukes in the world all simultaneously dissolved into jellybeans I would not be upset about it. I'm not about to get into a political debate about, well, anything here but it was a sobering experience to say the least.
Anyway, to finish my history lesson, one of the only buildings left standing was the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall (whatever that was) and the city left it up as a reminder of what happened on that day. It's very jarring to see it against the backdrop of what is otherwise a modern city and I'd have to say it's achieved its purpose.
After a yummy dinner we decided to take a walk around Hiroshima after dark. We stumbled across a shopping center but, sadly, most of the stores were already closed (even though there were still tons of people walking around!).
Tomorrow's our last day in this region and then on Sunday we're heading back to Tokyo and Jonah!!
P.S. Hiroshima is freakishly photogenic. It has fluffy anime clouds and perfect lighting for some reason.
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