April 13, 2025: Traveled from Osaka to Hiroshima for a day trip. It took an hour and a half by bullet train, or it could have taken over 4 hours by car as per Google. Or a 3 day walk in case you were wondering! My homies and I opted for the bullet train since it was quickest and we had our Japan rail passes burning a hole in our pockets! This trip (return) along with our Osaka/Tokyo journey got us our money’s worth on the 7-day Japan rail pass. Well if truth be known, it ended up being around the same cost when all was said and done, give or take a few dollars or yen!
I had wondered when we got the rail pass if it was going to be a good deal or if we should have bought individual tickets per trip, but convenience and peace of mind also played into it. For us, I think the pass was worth it, barely! I was also thinking though, our rail pass was good for 7 days… That thing would have got us all across Japan and back if we had a different agenda! That would have been insanely worth it I think! So yeah, definitely a good bargain if you’re visiting multiple cities across the country! There are also 3-day and 14-day passes.
Upon arrival at Hiroshima station, our only objective for the day really was to visit the Peace Memorial Park. We Googled how to get from the train station to the park by Transit and sheeesh! The busses take Suica too! Just scan your phone when you get on, and scan again when you get off the bus! Scan on, scan off! It was so simple. You don’t even have to talk to anyone. Alas, no bus pictures. Oh well!
The park was beautiful, so much pretty landscaping and it did have such a peaceful feeling about it, despite all the crowds! There is a museum on the grounds as well, but we didn’t go in. We walked the park though and the weather was gorgeous for it!
Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome), World Heritage Site, known nowadays as the A-bomb Dome. From the plaque: “At 8:15am, August 6, 1945, an American B29 bomber carried out the world’s first atomic bombing.”
Google translate at work here… I hope it’s accurate:
Visited the Children’s Peace Monument, “In memory of all children who died as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.” as per the plaque below which may be hard to read in this image.
Ringing the bell (below.) In lighter news, this maaaaaay have been ground zero for a certain virtual geocache. I wasn’t able to spend a ton of time geocaching in Japan, but there are lots of earth caches inside the park that could use some exploring, for any earth-caching cache lovers out there. No physical caches inside the park, probably for good reason! This virtual got me my Japan country souvenir. I must have logged the cache the day after since it says April 14th, but we were for sure there on the 13th. Aaaaah well!
It was difficult to get a good image of the entire monument with all the crowds. The park was very busy this day!
Lots of tulips in full bloom:
…and mandatory bird photos when possible:
Rather than taking the bus back to the train, we opted to walk:
There was shopping everywhere! There was a huge bakery along this area for which we all indulged. And there were some souvenir stores, but for all the souvenirs out there, I could NOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME FIND A JAPAN PATCH!! I have a collection of patches at home, some of which include a patch for each country I’ve been to (Note to self: Create a post about this later!) but alas, nowhere in my Japan travels did I see one, so I had to resort to Amazon… Boooooo!
Most if not all the souvenirs I found were anime-character related which is totally fine…. But still no patches! All I wanted was a patch that said ‘Japan’, with some kind of imagery. I did however, manage to find this FREAKIN’ AWESOME Catbus luggage tag!
Annnnnnyway, I’m glad we took this day trip over to Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, it was a worthwhile outing!
