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Leaving Hiroshima today. All in all it was a good 2 days, and I could have possibly stretched it one futher day if had gone into all of the museums in the peace park, but really 2 days here was enough. We were free to take our time today. We left the Friendship Centre at the same time as the Finnish guy with the cryptic name, and we all hopped onto a stupidly crowded tram. After a 20 minute tram ride from hell we got to the Hiroshima JR station, and boarded the Shinkansen with the Finnish guy from the Friendship Centre. We booked our seats, but decided to try our luck in getting some seats in the unreserved car first, which payed off. Because we have JR passes, and Charlotte and Angela travel free, we can only book 2 seats. 2 seats for 4 people and 4 bags on a train journey for several hours isnt pleasant. We found a block of 4 seats, which eventually turned into 6 a few stops down the line. Ahhh legroom. We found our way to the hotel with no problems, and checked our baggage. By "checked", I mean we put our bags in a pile against the wall in the foyer, and they were covered with a net with bells attached. Yep, bells. In the most technically advanced nation in the world, that is their method of luggage security. If we were anywhere but Japan it would be a concern, but I'm sure we could have left our bags out on the footpath with no problems. Since we are staying in a business hotel we cannot check into our room until 4pm. Great. 4 hours to kill. We headed over the road to the 8 story shopping complex, which had one or two shops per level. We decided to walk through each of them to soak up some time. Level 7 was a video arcade like the old Australian Timezone arcades, but 50 times bigger. A massive amount of games, from the old 'bash the crocodile' game to huge banks of pods, containing full surround screens and running fully networked first person shooter, robotic battle simulations and role playing games. Pretty much what you would expect from a Japanese 21st century video arcade, but still amazing to see it in the flesh. So with that shopping centre done in a couple of hours, we headed down the escalators, and realised that once we continued past ground level there was an entire city which existed under the ground, with tunnels of shops extending for hundreds of metres in each direction. Got to try my first Mos Burger too which was very good. If only they had them in Australia. Eventually we killed enough time in this labyrinth of tunnels to head back to the hotel. Found the nearest exit to return us to daylight, and once there attempted to find where on earth we were in comparison to the hotel. We found our way back, and got into our room. Very small, which is as we expected, but spotlessly clean and with every inclusion you could ask for, including breakfast, all for $82 per night virtually next door to the train station, so we are not complaining. Leaves us enough money to justify the prices we will be paying to stay in the ryokans in the mountains later on in the trip. A short walk to the 7/11 for their suprisingly good sandwiches for dinner, and some instant noodles for the girls, and time to turn in for the night.
- comments
Louise Brown Very nice... and what a great deal on the hotel! But what's a Mos burger? Louise Brown TravelPod Community Manager
Andrew Paterson Re: Very nice... Thanks for the comment. Mos Burger, from what I can gather, is a fast food chain which originated in Japan, but which has now expanded to a few other Asian nations. http://www.mos.co.jp/english/ I thought it was good, until I tried a Wendys burger. See tomorrows blog post. Cheers, Apat