Evening all, I`m very sleepy writing this despite having a good hour`s worth of kip on the Shinkansen to Hiroshima. I woke up nice and discombobulated, ready to navigate us to our hostel. Consequently, we got lost again.

What should have been a 4 minute walk took us approximately 30mins (but bear in mind I have 16kg of backpack to lug around with me, compared to Jim`s 9kg and Don`s 11kg) in the sweltering heat. Again, we roped in a local for directions and he ended up escorting us to the hostel, completely out of his way. Japanese people are officially the nicest people in the whole world. Fact.

Our hostel in Hiroshima isn`t as nice as the one in Kyoto but it has air conditioning so that`s all that matters. Jim and I stood for a good 5 minutes directly underneath it, drying our sweaty backs in the cold air. God, I sound so attractive!

We regrouped and got the sidecar down to the A-Bomb Dome, had some supermarket sushi and then looked about.

The A-Bomb Dome was eerie - it used to be the Industrial Promotion Hall until the bomb dropped almost directly above it. It`s a ruin but somehow its position meant that some of the walls survived. From there we wandered through the Peace Memorial Park, looking at the Flame of Peace (which will only be extinguished when the last nuclear weapon on Earth has been destroyed) and going into the Peace Memorial Museum.

It was an incredibly intense experience - fascinating and disturbing in equal measures. The worst part was seeing horrendous things like the remains of clothing and fingernails from victims, and reading individual stories. Eyewitness accounts really helped to put it in context and it was very moving. We all seemed to be quite subdued for a good while after leaving the museum.

After that we found a cafe and relaxed for a couple of hours before going out for tea (tapas and I got to have my first cider since Five Lamps - bonus!).

Totally knackered now so I`m going to go to bed. We`ve potentially got a 4 hour train journey ahead of us tomorrow as we go to Matsuyama on Shikoku.

Take care, love and miss you all x x x