Hiroshima: Museum, Ground Zero, Okonomiyaki Lunch
After breakfast at the hotel, we packed up and checked out, leaving our luggage for safekeeping. We had also packed up assorted small purchases and some clothes to free up some space in our luggage. The packed-up stuff was sent to our final hotel in Tokyo using the luggage forwarding service. This was the one and only time we used it, simply because we had packed efficiently to begin with (see luggage forwarding tips), and our purchases so far had been small enough to fit. Hotel staff filled out the paperwork for us (which involves checking with the destination hotel), and after paying the modest fee, we were done.
Our first stop was the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
Before entering, you encounter a clock that keeps track of the first use of an atomic weapon and the last nuclear test. Quite depressing all by itself. The museum itself provides a very good overview of what happened to the city and to the victims. There are static and interactive displays. Each item displayed embodies the grief, anger, or pain of real people.
After my visit to Auschwitz, this is probably the second location that had the biggest emotional impact on me. In both cases, I was well aware of the facts and consequences before visiting, but being on site and seeing the artefacts had a profound emotional impact on me. Do not take this as me discouraging you from going. It is well worth it in my opinion. The museum was quite busy, and it took us about an hour and a half to go through it.
Right after we visited the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall, which is located underground. The Hall of Remembrance contains a 360-degree panorama of the destroyed Hiroshima, recreated using 140,000 tiles, the number of people estimated to have died from the bomb by the end of 1945.
From there, we walked to ground zero to take pictures we had not taken the prior day. It was on our way to lunch, anyway. Starting very near the hypocenter, Hiroshima Hondori Shopping St. is the road we followed to our lunch location. From the end of that street, just two blocks to the right.
We had lunch at Sarashina (さらしな) 🗾, located on the second floor of the Okonomimura building in central Hiroshima. This floor has several restaurants in a sort of street-food arrangement. There are over 25 okonomiyaki restaurants in this building altogether! Sarashina serves traditional Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (layered, not mixed, with noodles), and their offerings are gluten-free (though it didn’t matter to us).
The whole place is run by a single woman, who prepared food on the hot plate right in front of us. When ready, you can get the Okonomiyaki server right in front of you on the hot plate. You get handed a mini-spatula to cut and eat the pieces. You can also ask for a plate and a fork. We thoroughly enjoyed this variation in a small setting (there were, at some point, 3 other guests), along with some biru.
After lunch, we walked back to the hotel and passed some time there before getting a taxi to the train station to board Shinkansen Sakura 562 (さくら 562) to Osaka, departing at 5:25 PM.