Hiroshima

Hiroshima is a wonderful, cosmopolitan city. I really enjoyed taking a break from the riding and hanging out there. I really love Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, which is a grilled thing with layers of batter, cabbage, soba noodles, some other filling, and egg. Way better than Osaka style. ;P I also had tsukemen, which is a Chinese-influenced cold-soba dipping thing, and today at Miyajima I had the local anago eel.
The Peace Park is very moving. I could just imagine the bomb exploding over the park, and looking at the pictures and diagram of before and after is so intense. The Sadako monument, aka the children's peace monument, was the most moving for me. Sadako was a girl who died of leukemia 10 years after the bomb, and she became a symbol for the anti-nuclear movement at the time, as she tried to make 1000 paper cranes before she died.

We finally got on the road today, although it was all a suburban slog with trucks, until we got all the way to Iwakuni. This is a historic town with a famous wooden bridge with a bunch of arches. We're staying at the youth hostel here, since we went so slow today, what the with rain and taking my mom to Miyajima. Tomorrow we're heading north towards Nichihara. I'm guessing that's about as far as we'll get.