Last full day in Hiroshima and Japan! Exciting and also sad. It feels like we have only just arrived and yet when I think back on all the things we have done it seems like we've been here for much longer than we have. I guess that's the beauty of holidays and getting out of the normal routine, time seems to slow down.

For our final day we started out as any other day by waking, washing and dressing. We were up fairly early considering we had gotten in late last night after the movie. We walked up to the station and had a bakery breakfast and then proceeded to the sightseeing bus stop.

We waited a few minutes before hopping onto the green route bus (yesterday we took the orange route). This sightseeing bus has probably been one of the best discoveries of our stay in Hiroshima. We get to use it for free because of our JR pass and then get to see all of these greats sights of Hiroshima.

Today our first stop was the Peace Museum. We had been here before on our first trip together but it's a nice museum and we wanted to go back. It's only ¥50 each to get in! The museum is undergoing some renovations and extensions so the layout was a bit different to last time. We saw the model of the area impacted by the bomb and also the items of clothing and rubble collected that were damaged by the explosion. It's almost incomprehensible that such a large amount of damage and destruction was caused by one explosion and within almost a split second. It's hard to imagine what it would've been like to be amongst the tragedy. And walking around Hiroshima now and understanding the size and scale of the impact zone is just mind blowing. It's a great museum. The gift shop also had the manga for sale that I had started reading in the Manga Library yesterday! So I bought volume one.

After the museum we strolled into the main arcade area and had lunch at Ichiran. I think it's becoming tradition to eat baked treats and ramen on our last day in Japan.

After lunch we walked to a maple bus stop and waited for the green bus to pick us up again. It was about a half hour wait and when we got on the bus I ended up having a bit of a nap.

Our next stop was at the base of the mountains located to the south of Hiroshima Station. There are a number of temples and shrines located in the forest here but we only stumbled across three. We walked up the mountain via a torii gate lined path and after 30mins made it to a Peace Pagoda. There was a great view of Hiroshima from here. From there we made our descent down the mountain through a suburban street and got to see some pretty nice Japanese houses as well as a cemetery with the best views of Hiroshima.

It took probably another 40mins to get down and then we went through the station to walk back to the hostel.

We spent a few hours in the hostel and ended up changing our hostel for tomorrow night in Shanghai after reading some recent poor reviews. So hopefully this new one goes well.

For dinner we took the street car downtown and had some wood fired pizzas. The place we went to had a tablet at each table for ordering your food which was pretty cool. The pizzas were delicious as well with nice thin chewy bases.

After dinner we walked through the arcade, played some games where I won a cat and Shannon won a Mario mushroom and then had dessert at Choco Cro. I had some choco-banana French toast which was tasty.

We walked back home after that and showered for bed. Hopefully we get a good night's sleep because tomorrow involves a train ride to Fukuoka and then the flight to Shanghai. Hopefully it all goes smoothly.