Leaving Hiroshima today. All in all it was a good 2 days, and I could have possibly stretched it one futher day if had gone into all of the museums in the peace park, but really 2 days here was enough. We were free to take our time today. We left the Friendship Centre at the same time as the Finnish guy with the cryptic name, and we all hopped onto a stupidly crowded tram. After a 20 minute tram ride from hell we got to the Hiroshima JR station, and boarded the S...

Miyajima today. Its been raining heavily all night, but there are patches of blue sky as we leave the WFC, so we were hoping that we might get lucky with the weather. First on the agenda was breakfast at the WFC. Yanky style coffee, fruit, cereal, toast, yoghurt and juice. Quite a good spread. Our hosts may be American and they may be wannabe hippies, but we couldn't fault their hospitality. Also at the table with us was the British guy who had to sleep on the fl...

Checked out of the Gimmond Hotel, and caught the subway to Kyoto train station, and got on the 7:50am super-express Shinkansen bound for Hiroshima, which headed through Osaka, Kobe (famous for the beef), Himeji (which we will be coming back to in a week or so) and a few other smaller towns. Overall it was just short of a 2 hour trip. Not real pleasant, as it was pretty much fully booked. When we arrived in Hiroshima station we followed the World Friendship Centre...

More rain overnight, and as we set out in the morning a slight breeze was blowing, which was a welcome relief from the heat. It was still hot though, and we were once again sweating by the time we got down to the bus stop to catch the bus to Kiyomizudera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyomizu- dera). After we arrived there at about 10am the crowds were already massing, and about half way up the steep narrow street leading to the temple I began to wonder whether i...

Awoken at 6am by a couple of young girls wrestling in their bed, the day began. I went down to the foyer and got some bus maps, and with that we were on our way. A whole day bus trip around Kyoto is 500 yen ($5) for an adult, which is good value considering individual trips are 220 yen. the girls aren't classed as human beings until they are 6 in japan, so they were free. We walked up to Nijo castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nijo_Cast le), which is about 10 m...