Hiroshima

Top things to do in Hiroshima

1. 01

   Atomic Bomb Dome - the ruin left standing

   history 👍 Popular

   The Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, a domed exhibition building finished in 1915 to a design by the Czech architect Jan Letzel, stood almost directly beneath the detonation, so the blast came down through it rather than across it and the brick walls and the steel ribs of the dome stayed up. The city argued for two decades about demolishing it and then decided to hold it exactly as it stands; it was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1996. The hypocentre itself was a few hundred metres up and one street over, marked now by a plaque outside a hospital.

2. 02

   Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum - the record of 6 August 1945

   history 👍 Popular

   The museum sets out the bombing and its effects largely through what was left of the people killed: a watch stopped at 8:15, a tricycle, school uniforms, roof tiles blistered by the heat, alongside survivor testimony and the medical record of what followed. It is explicit about injuries and deaths and does not soften anything. Allow about two hours, and leave time in the park afterwards.

3. 03

   Peace Memorial Park - the cenotaph, the flame and the crane monument

   history

   Kenzo Tange laid the park out across Nakajima, a dense commercial quarter that stood here until 1945, and lined up the cenotaph's arch with the flame and the dome on a single axis so you see all three at once. The Children's Peace Monument carries the paper cranes still sent from all over the world for Sadako Sasaki, who was two at the time of the bombing and died of leukaemia at twelve. The underground memorial hall at the eastern edge holds the names, the photographs and the written accounts.

4. 04

   Miyajima and the Itsukushima torii - the shrine that stands in the sea

   history scenic 👍 Popular

   The great vermilion gate and the shrine's boardwalk halls are built out over a tidal flat, so the whole thing changes twice a day: afloat at high water, walkable across the sand at low. Above it, Mount Misen has an old temple complex, a ropeway and a steep hour's climb to a summit view over the Inland Sea, with deer wandering the lanes below and grilled oysters and maple-leaf cakes sold along them. Check a tide table before you go, and stay past mid-afternoon when the day boats leave.

5. 05

   Shukkei-en - the shrunken landscape garden

   scenic history ⭐ Highly recommended

   Laid out in 1620 for the lord of the domain on the riverbank, the name means compressed scenery: a pond with islets, a high arched bridge and a circuit path that puts a whole landscape into a ten-minute walk. It was destroyed in 1945 and used as a refuge in the days afterwards; the trees that survived are marked, and the restoration is careful. The prefectural art museum shares the entrance.

6. 06

   Okonomimura and Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki

   food ⭐ Highly recommended

   Hiroshima builds its okonomiyaki in layers instead of mixing the batter: a thin crepe, a mound of cabbage steamed under it, pork belly, a nest of fried soba or udon noodles, an egg, then the whole tower pressed together and painted with sweet brown sauce. Okonomimura in the entertainment district stacks two dozen griddle counters over several floors and there is a similar floor of them above the station; you sit at the hotplate and eat off it with a small metal spatula.

7. 07

   Hiroshima Bay oysters - the country's biggest harvest

   food

   The rafts you pass on the ferry grow the largest share of Japan's oysters, and the season runs through the cold months. They turn up grilled in the shell on the island lanes and at the port, crumbed and deep-fried as kaki furai, and simmered with miso and vegetables in a doteni pot.

8. 08

   Hiroden streetcars - the moving museum

   history

   Hiroshima kept its trams when most Japanese cities scrapped theirs, and bought up the redundant rolling stock, so the fleet runs from short single cars with wooden interiors to long articulated low-floor trains. Two cars that were out on the network on the morning of 6 August 1945 were repaired and are still in service, appearing occasionally on ordinary runs. Line 2 goes the whole way from the station to the Miyajima ferry pier without a change.

9. 09

   Hiroshima Castle - the Carp Castle keep

   history

   A five-storey keep stood on this delta sandbank from 1589 until 1945; what you climb now is a 1958 concrete reconstruction with a museum of the castle town inside and a view over the moat from the top. The Ninomaru gate and turrets on the inner moat were rebuilt properly in timber, and a handful of trees in the grounds, including a eucalyptus and a willow, lived through the bombing and are labelled.

10. 10

    Mitaki-dera - the temple in the hills

    scenic history

    A mossy hillside temple on the northwestern edge of the city with three small waterfalls, ranks of stone figures and a vermilion two-storey pagoda moved here after the war as a memorial to the dead. It is twenty minutes out on the train and then a walk uphill, quiet on a weekday, and the place locals go for the autumn colour without leaving town.

11. 11

    Orizuru Tower - the dome from above

    scenic

    The tower on the corner beside the dome has an open-air timber deck at the top that looks straight down onto the ruin and out across the park, the rivers and the hills that ring the city. A long spiral ramp takes you back down past a glass shaft where visitors fold a paper crane and drop it in.

12. 12

    Hiroshima's art museums - Impressionists, Dali and Kurokawa

    culture arts

    The Hiroshima Museum of Art, in the park beside the castle, holds a strong run of French Impressionists and the Japanese painters who followed them. The prefectural museum beside Shukkei-en owns Dali's Dream of Venus, and the city's contemporary art museum sits up on Hijiyama hill in a Kisho Kurokawa building, in a park of cherry trees with a long view back over the rooftops.

13. 13

    Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium - a Carp game

    culture arts

    The Hiroshima Toyo Carp were set up in 1950 and part-funded by public donation in a city still clearing rubble, which is why the support is what it is: a stadium of red shirts, coordinated chanting and plastic bats, and an open concourse you can walk right around. The season runs spring to autumn and the good dates sell out well ahead.

14. 14

    Mazda Museum - inside the plant

    history

    Mazda's head office and main works sit in the eastern suburbs, and the company runs a booked-ahead tour that buses you over its private bridge into the site: the history of the three-wheeled trucks it started with, the rotary engines it bet the company on, and a viewing walkway above a live assembly line.

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