Another bullet train later and we were in the city of Hiroshima - sadly famed for the world's first atomic explosion at the end of WWII. Pretty poignant going round the Peace Memorial Museum and roaming around the Peace Park and amazing to think that the entire city was brought to the ground not that long ago. In one part of the park is a memorial to a girl who died of leukaemia, most probably brought on in the aftermath of the nuclear explosion. Before she died, she vowed to origami-fold 1,000 peace cranes. Sadly she never reached that number but since then the little paper crane has become a symbol for peace worldwide. They were absolutely everywhere - literally millions of them hung from lines. They look pretty cool as well. We had a go at folding some ourselves... We got as far as folding a square in half and then into quarters before giving up.

Seeing as we had been in Japan for over a week, we decided it was about time to test out a traditional form of Japanese accommodation (when in Rome and all that). So we checked into a Ryokan house ran by a little old lady who showed us to our little tatati-mat room where you sleep on the floor. Note to self - don't wear old stinking trekking socks when entering a Japanese house. Had some fun dressed up in kimonos as Davis-san and Atko-san sipping green tea. Funny how Anton can look so much like an Indian in India and so much like a Japanese in Japan.

From Hiroshima we took a little boat ride over to Miyajima with 'the third most scenic view in Japan' as the guidebook claimed. The scenic view in question is a 'floating' shrine with a torii out in the water. Very nice although the shrine was stuck in the tidal mud rather than floating over water. There were too many tourists (each complete with massive camera of course) and more of the vicious food-stealing deer so we decided to get our Everest Base Camp legs working again and trekked up to the highest point on the island. A few hours in and we were absolutely knackered! The views from the top were worth it though.

Back on the train we stopped off at Himeji for a bit of a smash and grab tour of a pretty spectacular castle before saying sayonara to Japan and g'day to Australia!