A happy Easter to everyone first! I hope everyone’s having a nice Sunday and enjoying the day with their familiy and/or friends. Go and search for chocolate rabbits and colourful eggs! I’ve already found my own chocolate rabbit, which Ruth gave as a present for the journey and the little bugger was trying to hide between the flowers on my balcony! But of course he had no chance. Thank you Ruth, you are the best!

So yesterday I was travelling to Hiroshima City together with Nicolò, an exchange student from Italy. Getting there takes about 15 minutes driving by bike plus another 30-35 minutes by train. One could also use the bus, but that’s a bit more expensive, even considering you have to pay 100 Yen to park your bike at Saijo station. We met at the A-Bomb Dome in the center of Hiroshima, which was the only building close to the center of the eplosion to not be completely destroyed and serves as memorial today. As it was already shortly after 2 p.m. at that time, we decided to eat lunch and went to Okonomi-mura to eat Okonomiyaki, the same place where I went last year and it was really rasty again – though not as much for Nicolò :/

After that, we decided to walk through the city a bit longer until it would become dark and we could have a first look at the nightlife district, before we go back to Higashi-Hiroshima. So we started what would become a square route in the end and walked through some backstreets until we found the Memorial Cathedral for World Peace, which had been built on the remnants of a former church that had been destroyed by the atomic bomb. The chief of the former church even went to the pope, to plead for the authorisation of his project and numerous countries participated with donations for the new Cathedral. So much for the history – personally, I got a feeling, that this building was cold and plain and not really that much awe-inspiring. But maybe that’s some modern or japanese influence, I honestly can’t say.

We then proceeded to the castle of Hiroshima, or what is left of it/has been rebuilt. The original castle had also been destroyed by the explosion and only one tower had been rebuilt, while all of the other remnants are only the foundations of the old buildings. But considering the size of only that one tower, the castle must have been huge actually. Right now, the area feels more like a park, of which Hiroshima has quite a lot, unlike other japanese cities. On the grounds of the former castle, we also found the Hiroshima Gokoku Shrine, which is devotet to the souls of those, who died in the fight for Japan, as we were told. I should have asked, if it was related to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, but I forgot to ask. There also were some trees, who had survived the atomic explosion. One of these, a willow, can be seen in the pictures below.

The last part of out trip was a small trip to the entertainment district of the city, but i guess we’ve been there too early, as, although the lights were already glowing like mad, it wasn’t really crowded (apart from one small street-restaurant, where there was a long queue in front oO). But maybe the bars only open later at night, because the one we checked only opens at 8 p.m. and that might be the same for the other ones. Some day I’ll go there for party and then we’ll see how it looks

So that’s it for now, enjoy the photos!