We arrived in comfort from Osaka on the Hikari express – the Shinkansen- to Hiroshima. The fantastic thing about rail travel in Japan besides been clean, fast and always on time, is if you miss your train, there’s always one leaving no more than an hour or so later. As we missed ours, it just meant having lunch in Shin Osaka station before catching the next one 😌
So we’re in Hiroshima for a few days and as everyone knows, Hiroshima is known for the atomic bomb which decimated the city on that faithful day in August 1945. However, as we discovered last night, Hiroshima is also famous for a local speciality- a pancake! More about that in a bit.
On arrival yesterday and with some help from a local woman we found our hostel which is in a great location near the Peace Park with loads of places to eat and drink nearby. Actually you’re never stuck for a place to eat and have a drink, the choices are endless and the quality is very good and the staff are always so friendly and polite.
Once we got checked in and got ourselves sorted, we headed out and went for a walk to get our bearings. We visited a few parts of the Peace Park and the Victims Memorial Museum, it’s all a lot to take in when reading the stories and looking at the photographs and even now a lot of people are taken over by emotion and sadness.
The only surviving building is known as “the Dome” due to its dome shaped roof it was actually a bank, which believe it or not, despite all the carnage, reopened just two days after the bomb was dropped.
After the park, we went to the main shopping street, which is about a kilometre long and covered over it’s entire length there are 100’s of shops, it’s very impressive and the local baseball team were playing today so there is a fantastic atmosphere around – I think they won.
So onto this pancake which is called a “Okonomiyaki”. I won’t do it any justice but here’s what you get. It starts with a thin pancake, which is then piled high with noodles, followed by shredded cabbage then a raw egg is dropped into the centre of it. After a few minutes of cooking they then add two large handfuls of pork mince and a large handful of what looked like peanuts, but thankfully wasn’t – we’ve no idea what it was. Then it cooks a little more before turned over onto an egg and pancake base. Now the best part, it’s then coated in some sort of soy glaze, which is then topped with a big handful of spring onion, more glaze and loads of mayo. Finally, they take a blowtorch to the whole thing before its served to you at your table which is also a hot plate. It tastes AMAZING!
That’s it for now,
C&J
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