Early in the morning of August 9th, Emma and I got on the train for Hiroshima. We had bought a special ticket called "Seishun 18 Kippu"; the same as I bought when I went from Kagoshima to Fukuoka in March, and used for the rest of the month. It is a great ticket and I recommend it to all of you who are thinking of going to Japan. It is a ticket with 5 squares on it. The first time you use it, it is stamped in the first square, and you can ride all trains except express trains and Shinkansen (bullet trains) all day long. It is valid for a month and so you can use it 5 days within that month, or use it together with someone else, in which case two squares is stamped for the same day. It costs 11,500 yen and can be bought at most stations. It is only sold in specific time periods so if you're unlucky you might not be able to buy it, but you should check it out. There is also a special ticket called the Japan Rail Pass, with which you can ride all trains (including Shinkansen) for a week, but it is much more expensive and you have to buy it before you go to Japan. For more information about prices and conditions for the Japan Rail Pass, visit this site. 

After getting the two first squares of the 18 Kippu ticket stamped, we got on the train, and finally we were on our way. Firstly we were going to the island Miyajima, close to Hiroshima City. According to our calculations it would take about 6 hours to get to there, so we were quite surprised when we were there in 4 hours. Miyajima is famous as one of the three most beautiful places in Japan. There is a famous shrine there, called Itsukushima shrine, with a giant torii gate in front of it. The shrine lies by the water, facing the mainland on the other side, and so the torii gate is placed in the water in front of it. When the tide is low, you can actually walk all the way out to the gate, but when we first got there the tide was too high. After we had visited the shrine we went to a large building on a hill, called Senjokaku. Next to it is a five-story pagoda. The wind blew gently between the pillars of the wall-less building, and it was incredibly refreshing and relaxing. Some people lay sleeping between the pillars. It felt like the world just stopped for a breath while we rested there. When we returned to the torii gate after some more strolling, the water level had sunk, making it possible to walk out to it. 

If you want to know more about the island of Miyajima I recommend this site. It has all the info you could possibly want to know. I'll just leave you with the pictures here.

The torii gate in front of the Itsukushima shrine, shot from the ferry over.	Emma with the roof of the Senjokaku to her left and the torii gate to her right in the background.	Emma and the torii gate, with the mainland barely visible in the background.
Some kids washing their hands before entering the Itsukushima shrine. It is believed that you are cleansed from evil spirits and such by doing it.	The torii gate as seen from a corner of the shrine.	The Senjokaku, with people resting or even sleeping between the pillars.
Emma watching the view from the Senjokaku.	Almost the same view as the one with Emma above, only with low tide.	The torii gate with a man standing by one of its pillars. Shot with the shrine behind me. What you see in the background is the mainland.
Look over there!  (<_<)--o-
	The torii gate with the shrine in the background.	A somewhat magnified version of the man in the picture above, so that you an get an idea of how huge the torii gate really is.

In the evening we took the train to Hiroshima city and went straight to an okonomiyaki restaurant that Emma knew of. The Hiroshima okonomiyaki is different from the more commonly known Osaka version. While the Osaka okonomiyaki (except filling) is thick like an omelette, the Hiroshima okonomiyaki (except filling) is thin like a crepe or pancake. Anyway, unlike most okonomiyaki restaurants, where you fry your okonimiyaki by yourself on a teppan (frying plate) in the middle of your table, this place had a huge teppan where the cooks made them for the customers. Emma and I sat right by the teppan and watched them at work. After getting really stuffed we went to the hotel to get some rest before the next day. It was a nice hotel, and by the beds were two paper cranes hinting what we were to see the following day.

After having a weird breakfast buffet in the morning (I can't handle a mix of light food like serials and toasts, and heavy food like fried potatoes, fish, meat and the like...) we checked out and headed for our first stop - the Genbaku Dome. The Genbaku Dome (aka the Atomic Bomb Memorial Dome) is located a mere 160 meters from the hypocenter of the bomb, and it is one of the few buildings that partly withstood the blast. It has been kept unchanged ever since the blast, as a symbol and reminder of the horrors of the atomic bomb and the importance of never using such a weapon again. I had actually seen it before, in a manga called Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) - a great manga about a boy who survives the blast and experiences the horrors before, during, and after the bomb. It is available in several languages, including Swedish, and you should read it if haven't already. I can also recommend the anime movie Hotaru no Haka (Grave of the Fireflies), which is actually considered as one of the great movies of all time by the highly regarded film critic Roger Ebert. You can read his review here. You can find facts and figures about the film at Nausciaa.net. Hotaru no Haka is not about the atomic bomb, but about two boy and his younger sister in another Japanese city around the same time. Their city were hit by fire bombs.

Close to the dome is a statue in honour of those who perished, and the statue is decorated all around with an unbelievable amount of origami paper cranes. A bit further away, across the river, is a statue of a girl named Sadako holding a giant paper crane, and below it is a mountain chain of paper cranes. You cannot imagine the amount of paper cranes unless you have seen it with your own eyes. The story about the Sadako statue is heartbreaking, and it is published in several books in most countries, so you might have heard of it. Sadako survived the blast, but later got ill, with a swollen up face and horrible pains. She spent a long time in a hospital, and never got any better. At a point she started folding paper cranes, with the hope that if she folded a thousand cranes her wish to get well would be granted. She folded cranes of every piece of paper she could get hold of. After a while other people started sending her cranes too. She actually folded over a thousand cranes, but she died shortly after. After they erected her statue, people started coming with folded cranes on strings. The folding of cranes is made for many reasons; to pay respect to the victims of the bomb, in hope of getting a wish granted, as a wish of peace, or any other reason. The main thing is that you put a lot of work and concentration in making the cranes.

Next, we went to the Cenotaph for the Atomic Bomb Victims. It is a construction with an arch through which you can see a burning flame, and through the flames you can see the Genbaku Dome in the distant. When we went there people had put flowers all over the place and six pigeons were sitting on top of the arch, creating an impressive image. One flew away before I could take a picture though. The fire that you can see is called the Flame of Peace and will burn until the day nuclear weapons are abolished. Then we proceeded to the Peace Memorial Museum. I was a bit shocked about the entrance fee. I thought it would cost around 500 yen, but the fee was actually 50 yen! I wonder why. Outside the entrance a couple of school kids came up to us and asked us questions about our favourite fruit, favourite sport (I don't like sport...), and where we were from. They had a map on which we placed a small sticker on our country. I was the first Swede. Emma was the second... Anyway, the Peace Memorial Museum was both interesting and horrifying. I cannot explain it well, but you can see most of it for your self on the Hiroshima Peace Site. They have a virtual tour and lots of information.

After visiting the Peace Memorial Museum we went to look for a Curry place Emma knew of, but she wasn't sure where it was. She asked a lot of people about it but nobody had head of it. The reason is that it is a really tiny unknown place, but Emma had been there before and said the curry was great. As we were walking around I spotted a little art store with a sign saying that they had a Yoshitaka Amano special exhibition. Yoshitaka Amano is a Japanese artist who is mainly known as the character designer of many of the games in the Final Fantasy series. I don't care much about that, but I like his very special style of mixing the delicate and the bold, often very detailed. The exhibition consisted of about 10 lithographs, some of which were from the new game Final Fantasy X. The best ones were not game-related though. The most interesting thing was that the girl who worked at the place was very forward and asked us which one we liked best, and then put that one in on a stand and went to get a light. She was very excited and explained that the experience is totally different with a strong light lighting up the picture. Then she turned on the light and moved it slowly over the picture, and then back again. We were not quite as excited as her, but we couldn't be rude, and I found it amusing that she got so worked up and went through all the trouble for us. I guess they don't get much business... After we had left (with an Amano poster!) we finally got hold of somebody who knew where the curry place was, and we found it after a while. It really was tiny. There were about 8 or 6 chairs along a bar behind which the two chefs prepared and served food and washed the dishes. But that was part of the charm of the place. And of course the curry was great. After getting stuffed we went to the train station and headed back home. 

On the way back I took a photo of a huge field of Lotus flowers that I had noticed on the way to Hiroshima. It is a truly beautiful flower, but I wonder why they have such a huge field of it.