Hiroshima

After spending a week or so in Okayama with Tomomi, I decided it was time to go again. I wanted to see a few places on bicycle and Hiroshima was the number one for me, as I had already come from the eastern side.

I started early, as always, around 5am when it still was dark and went off cycling for some time until having breakfast at a convinience store, be it 7/11, Lawson or Sunkus. I saw a sunrise at a bridge somewhere around Kurashiki and went on all the way to Onomichi, to which I stopped since there were some beautiful temples on the hillside all over the city. After taking a look at some of them, I went onwards. There were some problems to occur, though - it was going to be the hottest day of the month or so, perhaps even the hottest of all summer. I didn't know that when I went on cycling, though, and came to regret it later.

On the digital boards above the roads, the thermometers read 39 celsius degrees. If I bought something to drink, it was soon warmer than a cup of cocoa. So, I bought ice, but it didn't last for a long time either. And the distance I had to cover was 160km, which by itself was enough of a problem. Before, when I went from Kitami to Asahikawa, 180km wasn't all that bad and neither was Maizuru to Himeji, around 150km or so. But this was bad. It was positively dangerous and even lethal, but since I'm posting this, I didn't die although I felt like it. My heart was beating crazy every time there was a serious uphill and all I could think of was having something to drink although I drank all the time. Even after 6 liters of drinking, I was still thirsty when I finally got to Hiroshima.

As for Hiroshima itself, I went to a nice guesthouse called J-Hoppers. Oh, the memories from backpacking... it was exactly of that kind, a few locals mixed in with a bunch of Europeans and Americans all with different destinations and reasons to be in the country. After some chatting, though, I quickly passed out, since I was just dead tired from the toil of that day.

The next day I cycled to Miyajima in the morning. This was a mistake, as there were far too many people on the island. I heard later that in the evening, there had been almost no one around so it should've been my choice as well. Oh well, it was still a beautiful place but somehow I didn't feel that impressed. I just had to go there anyway, since it had been advertised as such.

Visiting Miyajima affected me in one way, though. I really didn't want to see any more touristy places after being there, so I dropped my plans to go to the Hiroshima castle and just visited the peace memorial museum instead. There, people at least didn't make a number about themselves, not even the kids. It was a profoundly sad museum with all the stories about the victims as well as all kinds of relics from the city after the bombing. What touched me the most was the story of Sadako, which I'm sure can be found in Wikipedia for those who are interested.

I met some nice folks in the guest house that evening and I ended up going to bed around midnight, getting only 4 hours of sleep. Not enough, not enough. But that's the only way - wake up early or don't leave at all.

The next day, I went to Miyoshi, a small village some 70km north of Hiroshima. I'll write about that later.