After our poor sightseeing efforts in Osaka, we were keen to make the most of Hiroshima, we had dumped our bags, acquired our maps and got into the city within 30 minutes of our arrival. We had an agenda. First up was sake shopping, we were keen to take a bottle of our favourite sake home with us, so set out on the hunt for 'taka', that's all we knew. We were unsure if this was the name of the type of sake, a specific sake or a sake brewery. One of the girls in the hostel pointed us in the direction of a large liquor store, unfortunately we were unable to locate said sake, and neither could the rather disinterested cashiers.

It was golden week in Japan, one of the biggest holidays of the year, where they have four bank holidays in one week. We knew there was a festival on in Hiroshima centre to celebrate this. Our next stop was the peace park. In the centre of Hiroshima, the peace park has multiple monuments and a museum to remember the awful events in 1945. We entered the park via the A-bomb dome, one of the only buildings that remained standing after the bomb and kept to this day in the state it was left, with the help of some large steel supports. There were huge scars in the concrete from where objects had been thrown against it. A photo next to the building showed the completely flattened surroundings, now filled with blossoming flowers.

The whole peace park had an uplifting feel to it, this may have been due to the the fact that the sun and festival goers were out, stalls lined the paths and dance troops and bands entertained in the squares. This was not quite what we had expected from a memorial park to such a sad subject. There were huge colourful origami cranes to remember a girl that died of leukaemia due to the radiation, she had decided to fold 1000 paper cranes before she died as they symbolise longevity, sadly she didn't make it to 1000. In the centre of the peace park is a flame that will not be extinguished until all nuclear weapons are destroyed.

Dodging dance troops, we headed for the museum which had some really interesting and informative exhibits. Other exhibits were very emotional, showing children's clothing that was burnt and melted, photos of children's burns and the famous bank step with the shadow of a person burnt onto it. Unfortunately the impact of the museum was somewhat spoilt by the hundreds of other people that were there because of golden week.

We wandered from the peace park towards town along an avenue where the festival continued. We stumbled into a craft beer tent in order to lift our spirits. Unsure what to order, we decided to be guided by the colour of the beer on the signs, choosing the two lightest colours, we bought two glasses of dark, thick, slightly chewy ale. We washed it down with a few sausages. It was in this tent, whilst observing a fairly intoxicated middle-aged Japanese women, BMI approximately 30, that Greg decided drunk people were the most ugly people on earth. Goodness knows how he ended up with Claire.

We briefly returned to our hostel to formally check in and enjoyed a free drink there. Whilst having a drink a girl arrived to check in that we had been speaking to at our hostel in Kyoto! After a quick catch up with her we headed back into town hoping the festival would still be going on. It wasn't. We therefore wandered around the night life area, being careful to avoid the numerous strip clubs. We dived into a BBQ restaurant for a delicious dinner we cooked on hot coals at our table. Following this we felt confident enough to try out a famous Japanese karaoke bar. We had been a little disappointed to learn that these are not one big bar with a stage where people take it in turns to get up and entertain but rather places with multiple small rooms you go to with your friends and just sing to each other. As we have no other friends we went into one of these rooms alone. Before long we had figured out the controls and there was no stopping us. We didn't let the fact that we had no sense of tone, tune or rhythm stop us from bellowing out some absolute classics covering every genre. After 45 minutes we were all sung out and decided a change of scene was necessary. We found a small bar on the eighth floor of a random building and settled into a couple of stools at the bar. The bartender was very keen to make Claire some experimental cocktails whilst Greg sampled the various whiskeys. We were both pleased to hear the Gypsy Kings greatest hits playing over the speakers. The barman filled us in on the latest news from the UK, he was particularly keen to discuss the new princess and her name which had just been announced.