Part 3
Trip Start
May 18, 2006
1
13
27
Trip End
May 30, 2007
Hiroshima and Fukuoka, Japan
Monday, August 7, 2006
Himeji was fantastic; we hired bikes and rode to the castle the town is famous for. The castle was great, a princess's dream with bell tower 4, stories, trap doors, secret passages, weapons stores and temple.
That night we arrived in Hiroshima, the day after the anniversary of the bombings, so there were still many wreathes on the memorials etc. The A- bomb dome is lit up at night and was an amazing sight.
We dinned on the local speciality, Okonomiyaki, a pancake layered with noodles, chicken vegetables and sealed with egg.
DAY 13 and 14: Hiroshima
Visited the peace park and museum, which just blew us away. The museums overwhelming message is to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The displays are very powerful, and begin to give you some appreciation of just how devastating the bomb was. The exposed X-ray film, that helped to definitively prove it was atomic bomb, was on display, it was exposed through it's lead protection.
"Miyajima Island" is off Hiroshima, it is famous for it's floating Torii. Well it was low tide when we arrived, so it wasn't quite floating so we decided to kill some time and go up the mountain, the easy way, on the rope way. The views at the top over the ocean were awesome. We shared them with the monkeys that call the island home. By the time we came down the tide was coming in a little and you got the picture of the torii floating.
DAY 15: Fukouka
Not too much to see, we were pretty exhausted and missing kimchi and Korea somewhat.
We took the Hydrofoil ferry to Busan, Korea which was awesome. We did the 200 km trip in just 3 hours, very fast. Wearing seatbelts on a boat was strange though, we found out it was in case evasive action had to be taken to miss a whale! Luckily no whales on our trip.
