Hiroshima: The most inspirational city in the world! | Japan Travel Guide

Ep.80 Japan is full of beauty, but when that beauty comes from a desire to make our world a better place, it becomes inspirational. We explore the history of Hiroshima, its delicious okonomiyaki Japanese pancakes, Peace Memorial Park, and we fold our own origami cranes to donate to The Crane Project. We also take a ferry to hang with the wild deer of Miyajima Island.

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Chapters:
00:00 – Start
01:03 – Hiroshima Okonomiyaki Japanese Pancakes
01:50 – How to travel to Hiroshima
03:03 – Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
05:35 – Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
06:15 – Sadako Sasaki’s Story
07:33 – The Crane Project at Orizuru Tower
09:49 – Visiting Miyajima Island
14:56 – What we paid

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There are so many dimensions to Hiroshima there’s the memorial Peace Museum and park but there also our inspiring origami cranes okonomiyaki Savory pancakes a stunning fairy ride to MIMA Island the famous floating Grand Tory gate daisho in Temple with its 500 small Buddha statues and if you didn’t

Get enough of the wild deer and Nara you will find plenty of them here we only have a day and a half but we explore it All welcome back to fing Gina Marie where we share our lives as full-time Travelers and the connections we make along the way if you’re new here welcome I’m Judy and I’m Kevin we couldn’t go to Japan without visiting Hiroshima when we booked our trip we had so many questions

About this city and its tragic history and we really weren’t sure about how we’d be received as American Americans visiting there it wasn’t at all what we expected we took a walking tour of Hiroshima which I highly recommend but before we talk about that we need to

Talk about the Savory pancakes that my sister told me that we must try and they’re so memorable we want to include them right out of the gate if we didn’t already know that these were a Hiroshima food we probably would have missed them we’re so glad we didn’t because we ended

Up eating a variation of them throughout our time in Kyoto since they’ve got eggs meat and vegetables they’re a complete meal and so yummy the place we went to was very small on a narrow Street in the fujimo district we’ll put a link in the description below we had a bit of a

Communication breakdown with the owner and she made only one for us to split versus one for each of us and that was quite a tragedy because the food was amazing as with many trips when you’re Crossing from City to city in Japan the high-speed train system is wonderful we

Recommend that you get tickets in advance because then you get to pick your seat seats last minute tickets sometimes you’re stuck with whatever seats available this is especially true if you want the two- seat configuration versus the three seats if it’s just two of you traveling in our other episodes

From Japan we encourage you to arrive early and pick up some sort of bento box that you can get at the train station it’s perfectly acceptable to eat on the long-distance trains we got some Maki Sushi to share the ride’s a quick hour and 40 minutes and very comfortable

Hiroshima has both buses and trams but we took a tram to our hotel which was walking distance from Memorial peace Park the buses and trams run about the same time but you want to take the one that’s more convenient for where you’re staying in the city ours was about a

16-minute commute and we only cost a dollar or two to ride our hotel was definitely budget sized so there wasn’t a lot of room and we were only there a couple days so it wasn’t a big deal it was clean the bed was comfortable and the shower was hot although it was quite

A step up to get into a bathroom that’s a step up and a half really outside of that what more could you want our first activity when we arrived was to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum it was part of a tour that was 4

And 1 half hours long our guide Mizu was shy and her voice was very quiet but at the end of the tour she said something that we’ll never forget the bombing of the city center of Hiroshima was the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used outside of t

Explosions and it destroyed 5 square miles of the city over 180,000 people perished 63% of the buildings were completely destroyed and many more were damaged in total 92% of the structures were either destroyed or damaged by blast and fire our guide talked to us about how everything had changed as a

Result of the bomb instantaneously the blast heated the exterior of Sumitomo Hiroshima Bank to over 5,000 de C which was enough to make this smooth stone blocks rough to the touch everyone in the Bank building perished but the closed Shutters on the first and second floor saved the interior from complete destruction

Because so much of the surrounding area was completely destroyed the interior of the bank was cleared and used as a shelter unfortunately the dangers of radiation poisoning weren’t known at the time and shockingly the bank reopened for business 2 days later and 6 hours later they had the water supply

Restarted as we know now the impact of radiation poisoning is multigenerational some of the most heart-wrenching images that we saw during our time there were of people suffering from radiation poisoning and how it affected their future generations to look now in 2023 except for the signage around the city you

Might not even know the devastation that occurred here with the exception of the atomic bomb dome which has never been restored it looks like a vibrant thriving City the survivors of the bomb have worked tirelessly to educate about the impact of nuclear weapons in the hope that they are never used Again our first stop in the museum building was the Peace clock it was installed in 2001 in the hope of reducing the number of nuclear tests performed around the world the clock shows the number of days from the herim bombing and it also counts the number of

Days since the last nuclear test which obviously has been reset more than once one of the most remarkable things about the entire park is how many inspirational elements were added to it the park has over 200 species of trees that have been donated from all over the

World to be symbols of both restoration and peace peace Park also includes the flame of Peace it was designed to both console The Souls of the thousands of people who died begging for water and to express the hopes for the elimination of nuclear weapons and Lasting World Peace

The flame at the top was lit in 1964 and has been burning ever since in protest of nuclear weapons and will continue to burn until there are no nuclear weapons left on Earth we want to share an inspiring story of a little girl named Sadako who

Was only 2 years old when Hiroshima was bombed she ended up Contracting leukemia at 12 years old when she was in the hospital for treatment the Red Cross youth club gave the children in the hospital origami cranes according to Legend a crane can live for a thousand

Years and a person who folds an origami crane for each year of a Crane’s life will have their wish granted sodaka was inspired to have her wish of being well again granted by folding 1,000 origami cranes despite her illness she managed to fold a th000 cranes unfortunately she

Didn’t recover from her Illness but she started to fold additional cranes for wishes for others she died surrounded by family and 1300 origami cranes sadako’s story inspired her classmates to raise money for a monument to honor their little friend and donations grew enough to commemorate the thousands of children

Who died due to the Bombing [Applause] We weren’t sure what was happening next and why there was a lunch but we’ll take it and we ended up going to orizuru Tower it was included as part of the tour so we didn’t have to pay extra for it we had several very cool surprises

Here we started by eating in our laps in area called Hiroshima Hills which is a rooftop Observatory and gives you a view of the atomic bomb Dome and also Ground Zero it’s designed to be a place for meditation and reflection thanks and part to its stunning

Views we had no idea that we be part of the crane project and get to pick a piece of paper and create our own paper crane fortunately there were guys to help us although they say it’s very easy I didn’t find it to be that way after we

Created our cranes we stepped out onto the glass ledge of the building don’t worry it’s enclosed and dropped our cranes down into the orizuru wall the visuals of this building that was refurbished and designed with a glass wall that was specifically built to hold paper cranes made by visitors is just

Awe inspiring it’s intended to hold the World’s hopes and wishes and the guess is that it will take about a half a million cranes to fill it up so we’re curious if you are visiting Japan would you make time for Hiroshima let us know in the comments so what did

Our guide say that was so remarkable well we asked her about how the people in Hiroshima feel about Americans because we felt a little sensitive walking into a city like this with the history that’s here and she said that there was culpability on both sides that it’s much more complex history of what

Happened and that the city’s attitude is we’re working towards World Peace we’re working to make sure that this never happens to another city in the world so I thought that was a pretty damn positive way to treat a horrific situation like this going forward before leaving Hiroshima we wanted to ensure

That we didn’t miss anything else that was super important and we’re so glad we made time for Mio Jima Island but before we dive in we’re excited to share that we’ve started our own absolutely free community Forum that we are calling La Familia you can ask questions about trip

Planning and all things related to travel there a video with the details is linked in the description below we had very little time to visit Mima Island so we got up extremely early and had a plan we’re going to take our carry-on suitcases and put them in lockers and at

The Hiroshima station so we could go right to Kyoto after we were done so this wasn’t too bad this was 700 Yen and it held all of our stuff which our two backpacks and our two carryon suitcases and we didn’t originally have uh change but there was somebody that

Had a volunteer um vest on and he was able to make change was tried to be very helpful so it was a little bit frustrating that Kevin had already gone to get money did you want to open that up it’s pretty deep so we were able to

Stack the two carry on Lage and put the backpacks in front and only 500 yen if you only needed space for a backpack the fery to the island takes about 45 Minutes so we boarded the ferry and the views are absolutely incredible I know that our cameras cannot cover the beauty they Oversee as we got close to the island we could see itsukushima Tory gate it appears to be floating on the Water There’s a lot you can do here or you can skip much of it and wander around just like we did we knew our time was short so we wanted to take in all the views especially of the deer just a reminder that these are wild deer and although

They seem tame they can be aggressive you’re only allowed to feed them special crackers that you buy on site but some people have said that the deer can be a bit more aggressive after you’ve fed them because they want you to give them more so very successful we made it to

The island and now we’re near the otori gate which is out there in the water and it worked out well for us so technically it’s in the ground but this is we’re going on high tide so we get to see it appear to float in the water which

Obviously it doesn’t uh when you come in low tide you could see the sand and everything else but a nice surprise for us to catch it at the right time the five-story pagota you was originally built in 1407 but the interior isn’t open to the public we didn’t have time

For it but there’s a ropeway up to mount Mison for a fee it takes about 30 minutes and some people choose to walk down your choice but the views from the cable cars look fantastic we didn’t have time for breakfast or coffee before arriving so we stopped to sample a

Coffee flavored soft serve take two take two so didn’t have coffee so I didn’t put the button right this is our coffee this morning it is vanilla vanilla yeah specialty specialty ice cream and which kind of works like a cappuccino I think you know coffee and

Milk maybe I can push the button right this time cheers cheers it was very good but it wasn’t coffee still as good as on the first take another famous treat from here are little Maple Leaf cakes typically stuffed with red bean paste they’re made from buckweed and rice on the exterior

We didn’t get them in the park but we picked some up from the train station so we could enjoy them and R to our next destination before boarding the fery back we stopped at Daisha in Temple it’s got plenty of steps but they’re worth it we were so surprised to see 500

Buddhist statues here I’d heard about them but I thought we were going to miss them and for us we had actually come to Hiroshima before we saw all of the temples so this was our first experience to see the decorated buddas the red bibs and caps are placed

On the statues by parents as a memorial to their children whose lives were taken away too Soon so let’s talk about what we pay our round trip tickets from Kyoto to Hiroshima with assigned seats cost us 11,080 Yen a piece which includes an extra 510 Yen for a reserved seat which is optional thanks for having us it’s great you’re doing a fine job our hotel cost us

27375 Yen for three nights but we were working so we only had a day and a half to explore Hiroshima Peace walking tour was $163.8 for both of us which included lunch and the crane making activity at orizuru Tower entry to the tower is 1,700 Yen per person and if you want to

Do the crane making it costs 100 yen a piece but both were built into the cost of our tour so we didn’t have to pay either of those fees the large luggage Locker that we use cost 700 Yen for the whole day the fery to MIMA Island cost

4,000 Yen round trip per person and the delicious coffee flavored soft serve Cones were 900 Yen for both of us this concludes our Japan series and we hope you’ve enjoyed it check out our enti playlist from Japan in case you missed any episodes thanks for watching our Japan episodes we really appreciate it

And we have had a great time filming it so subscribe if you haven’t already so you don’t miss any future episodes from here check out find.com where there’s a lot of Articles and good information and our forums yes until next time until next time