Today we enjoyed a good day in Hiroshima. We were ready to head out around 10am and Shannon discovered a brochure in the foyer that showed a sightseeing bus that we could use our JR rail passes on. We took the street car down to the city centre, had a quick breakfast at Cafe Veloce before making our way to the maple bus stop.

We took the maple bus one stop to the Hiroshima Manga Library which has one of the biggest collections of mangas in Japan (I think?). Anyway it was free to walk in and look at the rows and rows of manga. There was even a small English section and I found a good series called Barefoot Gen. It's a ten series manga based on a man's account after the nuclear bomb hit. They didn't have the first volume there but I spent some time reading volume two and I'm going to try and find the volumes to buy.

After the library we hopped back onto the bus and went another few stops to the Shukkeien, a large garden. We spent an hour strolling around and enjoying the landscaped space. There was a big ginkgo tree there that had survived the atomic bomb and was now growing on an angle. The seeds of the tree have been shipped all over the world in a sign of peace.

We had a drink at the garden cafe before taking the bus back around the city and getting off at the downtown stop that we initially got on at. We found an okonomiyaki restaurant for lunch and enjoyed a big one each.

We did a bit more strolling around and Shannon bought a carp hat and I bought a new diary, a back scratcher, some face wash and a calendar. We decided to see the new Star Wars movie and found a cinema. The next session available that wasn't sold out was the 9:10pm one so we got our tickets and looked through Tokyu Hands before catching the street car back up to the hostel.

At around 7pm we headed back downtown and found a Coco Ichiban for dinner. After strolling around for a bit we headed to the cinema to see the movie. The cinema was very nice with large red couch like chairs and a bench table running along in front to hold your drinks and such. We had bought an ice coffee each and a small container of shortbread biscuits to share. The movie was really good. We were both suitably impressed.

When we got out around 11:30pm the street cars had all finished up for the day so we ended up having to walk home. Fortunately it isn't that far and it gave us good time to discuss the film.

All in all I think this was an excellent day. Tomorrow is our last full day in Japan. It's sad but also exciting because I'm very much looking forward to going to China.