Well this is very unusual, I'm traveling with someone. His name is Darren, he is my boyfriend and it does seem a miracle has occurred. We are currently in Hiroshima, Japan and loving every minute of it.

We arrived here yesterday after our night flight and then had to take three trains, two of them Japan's famous bullet trains. We were very impressed by how fast, clean and most importantly on time the transport here is and although that way of getting here sounds complicated and messy, it was simple, clean and efficient.

We checked into our hotel, which is called hotel Sunroute, after a short taxi ride from the station. The interior of the taxi was COVERED in doilies. The hotel is nice and we have a great view of the river. We went out exploring after freshening up and ended up in this huge undercover mall, not unlike the one in Las Vegas, where we had dinner at a place called "Snack Shack" and I introduced Darren to H&M. We found him a lovely jacket for 5000 yen but he didn't buy it because he was suspicious of it being so cheap. He's not used to just how ripped off we get in Australia yet.

This morning of course we woke up and had to go back to the mall to buy said jacket, Darren also bought gloves and I bought a nice red and black jumper, a scarf and a really cool necklace with an Eagle on it, the whole lot set me back about 2200 yen, or about $22.00.

We then came back to our hotel to dump our purchases and then proceeded to walk to the Atomic Bomb museum, which was a whopping 50 yen (50 cents) to get in. The museum was dark and sombre and had a very personal feel to it. It was very interesting to see the story plastered all over the museum and even more interesting to see no mention of the bombing of Pearl Harbour which was of course the reason the bomb was dropped.

There were exhibits that you could touch, like roof tiles that had blistered, melted and fused together during the blast and there was someone's pocket watch that had stopped at the minute the blast went off. After the museum, we visited Peace Park and saw the eternal flame and all the other memorials. At the Korean Memorial two elder Japanese gentlemen stopped to ask me to take their photo and then asked Darren and I where we were from.

We then moved on to the Atomic Bomb Dome, left exactly as it was after the blast, truly an eerie reminder of the devastation. The bridge before the dome, the "T Bridge" was actually meant to be the target of the bomb. Darren and I walked back over the bridge and sat under a cherry blossom tree in the sun, and reflected on what was in front of us.

There is a red sightseeing bus here which we managed to find and we managed to ride this to Hiroshima Castle, which was the one thing I had most wanted to see here. It is completely surrounded by a moat and we ended up walking all the way around it trying to get into the grounds. The castle was of course destroyed in the blast, but was rebuilt in 1958. It was a Samurai museum inside and Darren even got to try on some of the gear. We climbed all the way to the top, and both agreed the castle was the view.

We then headed back to the hotel and had a bit of a rest before meeting up with Amado who is also here. He went out for dinner with some people who live here in Hiroshima and Darren and I went and had dinner in a lovely Japanese restaurant in town. We had Goyoza, lotus root chips and noodles. We stopped at Starbucks on the way home for hot chocolates as it is absolutely freezing here! Tomorrow we are off to Darren's mother ship: The Mazda Museum.