The Land of the Rising Sun

We landed at Fukuoka late in the evening with little time other than to set up in our apartment and go to bed. The following day we visited the old castle ruins and the lake in the middle of the city, with turtles and a great playground for Flora before walking to the city coastline along a beach and had a delicious beachfront Italian dinner (we couldn't find a Japanese restaurant) and blew our daily budget on a couple of bottles of wine! Slightly inebriated we navigated the bus and train system back home.
The next morning we boarded our very first bullet train. It was so sleek, so quiet, and oh so fast. We reached Hiroshima in around ninety minutes and were pretty exhausted from our recent city exploring that we just hung out at the apartment for the rest of the day.
The apartment was a good walk to the city centre. We first visited Hiroshima castle, which explained the history of the

city. From the top floor balcony we had our first view of the dome that survived the atomic bomb that was almost exactly beneath its epicentre. The memorial park and museum remember and honour the thousands of lives needlessly lost when the bomb was dropped in 1945. It was so sad to listen to the testimonies of those who survived and those who died shortly afterwards. The museum is extremely confronting in its horror and we found the experience upsetting and distressing. We took a slow stroll back home and watched a film together (Wall E) which Flora found really upsetting, perhaps because of emotions heightened by the days experience.
Miyajima island is hailed as having one of the

three best views in the whole of Japan- a shrine that appears to float on the water at high tide. Unfortunately for us the shrine was shrouded in scaffolding and therefore pretty underwhelming! However, we had a great day on the island, stroking the extremely friendly deer, trying the local specialty, Okonomiyaki, for lunch, and visiting the local Aquarium. It was jam packed full of tourists, but it was a lovely day.