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After a day of travelling on Thursday we arrive in Hiroshima and look for a bus to catch to the Hiroshima Youth Hostel. Easily found we hop on and head for our humble home for the next two days. We arrive at the stop and find a sign that says the hostel is roughly an 8 minute walk away. 'Great' we think! So we head off...
We round the corner and alas! We come across a beast of a hill roughly rivaling the steep slopes of Mount Everest. Our hearts drop as do the 10 tonne bags on our backs. Our ascent begins tirelessly but after about 10 seconds we could barely go on. Finally after an 80 minute walk, 3 'sit down' breaks, 10 photo stops and a conversation between each other about the possibility of hailing a taxi, we arrive at our destination.
Entering the hostel we are welcomed by an extremely small lady.. possibly the smallest we have seen so far! She explains the rules to us... home by 11, shower between 6.30am and 8.30am or public bath between 5pm and 10pm and lights out by 12. We were horrified! We came away to escape home rules - not to be given more of them! But it has turned out to be a rather charming place!
We went out for a lovely meal on Thursday night to a place where absolutely none of the staff could speak English. It was a traditional Japanese restaurant and we were shown to our table - on the floor! The menu was entirely in Japanese but we managed to mime to the waitress to pick us her choice of anything! We didn't expect octopus, caviar and cold mashed potato. However, it was a very enjoyable banquet!
On Friday we made our way to the Hiroshima Peace Park where we were approached by one of the only A-Bomb victims still alive. He gave us a free tour around the park which lasted about an hour and a half and was incredibly moving. We learnt alot about what happened in Hiroshima when the bomb hit.
Then we caught the train to Miyajamaguchi and the ferry to Mayajima which is a picturesque island just off the shore of Hiroshima. We looked around the shrine and the five story pagoda which looked stunning against the setting sun. There were many deer roaming the island and Martha got the stupid idea to decide to feed one of them. This turned out to be a bad idea. Every single deer on the island smelt the food and came running. We only just made it out alive.
We are now about to leave Hiroshima and head onto Beppu...
Speak to you soon.
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