kim and i headed down to hiroshima during 'obon' (2nd week of august). 'obon' is a festival to welcome back dead relatives to the family home and stuff. because the week long holiday also falls during the anniversary of the a-bomb hitting hiroshima, it's very busy and well, being the organised person i am, i didn't bother booking a hotel.

after spending 6 hours on a train, i got to work getting us a hotel. rang up a few places asking them in japanese if they spoke english, the next hurdle was to see whether there were any rooms available. now all the backpackers were booked so, i eventually got on to a place that sounded reasonable. we arrived there look at it and it was clean. a really good joint and as a bonus it had a porno channel, well 3 in fact (this is very common in all japanese hotels!!!) anyway, we dumped our bags and headed to the peace park. i came here with mash about 10 months earlier but it still had the same eerier felling about the place. anyway, its very hard to explain what it was like, but i do believe everyone should go once, to get an understanding of how much destructions was involved. anyway enough of that. later that night we went to a nice japanese restaurant and then to a bar mick, mash and i went 10 months earlier.