We arrived in Hiroshima at eight o'clock on Saturday morning feeling very bleary-eyed after our ten hour overnight bus ride from Tokyo (more snorers, and not enough legroom so we only managed a few hours' interrupted sleep each). A short tram ride took us to our hostel which was really nice, but far too early to check in and so we had to dump our bags and occupy ourselves for a few hours. We used the time to research our onward journey from Japan; our plan is to visit Vietnam or Cambodia but all of the flights are hideously expensive - it's almost as cheap to fly via Australia! Frustrated, we sent Steve a message asking for help with alternative ideas and went off in search of lunch: a bar and grill where we discovered the iTranslate app on our iPods and had a conversation with the guys who worked there, brilliant! The only thing is that you need to be connected to the internet to use it so it only works if we are somewhere that has WiFi...

On Sunday, we went to look at the A-Bomb Dome and the Peace Memorial Museum. It was a beautiful sunny day, and although there were quite a few tourists it wasn't too busy. The A-Bomb Dome is one of the very few buildings which was left partially standing after the bombing on 6th August 1945; it's a European-style building with a dome which was made from an iron frame with copper sheeting, and the copper was melted in the blast and the dome is now just the iron frame. There are other parts of the building still standing, and it is now a World Heritage site and is the most obvious reminder of what happened. The rest of the city is a lot like any other modern Japanese city (quite pretty, with several rivers running through it), and although the people of the city have clearly and very valiantly moved on, they haven't forgotten what happened and are very keen to stop it from ever happening again anywhere.

For lunch we tried the recommended Okonomiyaki which is a bit like bubble and squeak with noodles in a pancake: the restaurant cook it on a hotplate in front of you; it was delicious! We also had some Yakisoba, which tastes excactly the same as the one we used to eat in Taro on Old Compton Street.

While we were looking at the Dome, a lady offered us a free tour of the immediate area as she wanted to practise her English. She was great, and told us a lot of background information about the city and the bombing. She also showed us some things we otherwise wouldn't have known about as they aren't really on the tourist map including the hypocentre and a cemetary (which survived the bombing), which was really interesting. It was, however, quite a surreal experience, as she was quite excited about getting her English right whilst telling us some truly horrific things. Afterwards, we walked through the Peace Memorial Park which has an arch-shaped cenotaph through which you can see the ruins of the Dome, with an eternal flame, and on to visit the museum which lies at the end of the park. It was fascinating, very factual and gave lots of information about what the town was like in the decades before the war (we didn't realise that it was a military hub, which was one of the main reasons for its selection as a bombing site. Another reason, apparently, was that of the 16 towns the US shortlisted for bombing, it was the only one which didn't have a PoW camp).

We were impressed by how factual and unemotive the displays of information were; the subject really speaks for itself and needs nothing extra. The Japanese have also been very frank about their involvement in the war, and do not try to make themselves out as innocent bystanders. We actually made two visits to the museum as you need a good three hours to see everything, and it's all quite harrowing. It really leaves you with a strong feeling of how awful any kind of war is (even more so than you normally would) and you can't help but admire the people of the city for what they have done in the past sixty five years. Ten years after the bombing the city's population had returned to its pre-war level - most impressive. There is a very big peace movement led by the people of Hiroshima, and every mayor of the city since 1945 has written a letter to Heads of State each time they carry out a nuclear weapons test, urging them not to. They have copies of each of these letters displayed in the museum: there were 594. It's quite hard to describe how it feels to see all of this; you really need to pay the city a visit and see it for yourself.

In the park there is also a memorial to Sadako, a little girl who was a baby when the bomb hit and who contracted leukaemia at the age of ten. An ancient Japanese legend says that folding 1000 origami cranes makes a person's wish come true such as long life or recovery from a long illness, and Sadako managed 644 before she died. Her friends folded the rest and buried them with her, and there is now a Children's Memorial in the park. People from all over the world fold cranes and send them, and all of the war memorials in the park are covered in long strings of them - thousands of them. It's quite a moving sight.

All in all the city is moving, thought-provoking, a little sad, yet very hopeful - a place that everyone should see for themselves.