World According to Pete

Wacky random ramblings about wacky random trips

April 10, 2024

Fun Day in Hiroshima

But first, some general observations about traveling by train through Japan 😀 When you are in a train, any intermediate destination is always “a brief stop.” When conductors walk through the train, the rear door opens and the conductor bows to the car in front of him. He paces through, turns around at the end, and bows to the people he just passed. It sorta seems like overkill…. but OTOH it was also kind of nice. On planes, every public address begins with “Dear passengers,” which is kind of pleasant to hear as well.

In Japan, one can always find vending machines to serve whatever you could want. But once you have gotten your heart’s desire, you then have an empty can or container or whatever, and that’s when you discover that throwing anything away in Japan is nearly impossible. There were several times when Robert and I weighed the plusses and minuses: sure, we could get a delicious cool drink, but then we’d be stuck with the empty bottles for miles and miles before we could find a place to dispose of them!

Hotel bar drinking and smoking Hiroshima — Love this sign to the bar 😀

Hiroshima tunnel piano playing — While there doesn’t seem to be a subway here, there are a ton of underground passageways, and many of these have unattended pianos, where anyone who feels the urge may sit down and pound away at them… we heard some very talented musicians, perhaps just practicing, who knows—in any case, they lend a very welcome vibe to the tunnels!

Ground zero Hiroshima — Ooooof… our very first views of the most famous bombing artifact in the world. I had always wondered, if the bomb was so devastating, how was it that the building directly beneath it was so (relatively) intact? Turns out that at exactly ground zero, the explosive force from the bomb was vertical: i.e. in the exact direction that a building’s walls were strongest. If the forces had been at even a slight angle, this building would have been swept away like everything else… a sobering thought, to say the least

Huge bird peace garden Hiroshima — We saw this guy on the shores of the extensive Peace Garden, my first thought was that the radiation was still active lol

Hiroshima park edging — Here’s a **very** Japanese sight: there’s a guy doing edging, and a second person holds a screen and moves along with the edger, thus protecting the walkway from any stray blades of grass 😀

Hiroshima flower beds — Hiroshima is a very beautiful place to walk around in, I very much hope to return here some day

Hiroshima flower beds roses — Hiroshima is a very beautiful place to walk around in, I very much hope to return here some day

OK, so it was time to sample a local speciality for lunch. Dunno what it’s called, but it’s basically a giant vertical pile of stuff which all cooks down into a thick pancake-like dish. We found a building which has (in typical Japanese over-kill style) SIX FLOORS of restaurants which specialize in this dish, with multiple restaurants on each floor!

Pop quiz: guess which floor we chose?

Hiroshima restaurant — This is an early stage of our two—there’s a crepe you can’t see, underneath

Here he’s flipped them and is creating an egg layer

Many sauces & garnishes later, they’re pretty much ready!

Well, he naturally has to use a flame-thrower on them first

Here’s a cross-section, they are surprisingly delicious!

Hiroshima began as a fortress town, with a giant double-moated watchtower from the 16th century. It didn’t do so well in August 1945 but they built a pretty faithful replica which houses a number of interesting artifacts which, while strong enough to have endured centuries of calamity, are (according to the signs) much too delicate to survive having their pictures taken by a modern cellphone.