Hiroshima Alone: The City That Keeps Rebuilding

Hiroshima requires a specific kind of attention from a visitor. It is a city that was completely destroyed in 1945 and has been rebuilding itself for eighty years. The Peace Memorial Park and the Atomic Bomb Dome are genuine places of historical significance, not tourist attractions in the ordinary sense.

Going alone is the right way to go.

The Peace Memorial

The Peace Memorial Museum takes two to three hours to move through properly. It documents the attack of August 6, 1945 with directness: the effects on individuals, the temperature, the shadows burned into concrete, the watches stopped at 8:15 a.m.

The museum has been renovated multiple times and is well-designed in its use of specific, human-scale evidence rather than abstract statistics. Go in the morning when it opens, before the school groups arrive.

The Atomic Bomb Dome — the skeletal remains of the Industrial Promotion Hall, preserved as it was after the explosion — is visible across the river from the park. Standing in front of it is an experience that photographs don’t adequately prepare you for.

Okonomiyaki

Hiroshima has its own style of okonomiyaki — a layered construction of batter, cabbage, noodles, pork, and egg — that differs significantly from the mixed Osaka version. The noodles are cooked separately and layered into the pancake as it cooks; the result is more substantial and more complex than the Osaka version.

Okonomimura (Okonomiyaki Village) is a building in central Hiroshima with approximately twenty-five okonomiyaki restaurants on three floors. The format is counter seating at a teppan (iron griddle). Order, watch the cook build your pancake, eat it hot.

Hiroshima okonomiyaki is, in the author’s view, the better version of the dish.

Miyajima

Miyajima island, a 25-minute ferry from Hiroshima, has the floating torii gate of Itsukushima Shrine — possibly the most photographed image in Japan. At low tide you can walk to the gate. At high tide it appears to float in the sea.

The island is crowded during the day. The ferry stops running late at night. If you can stay overnight, the post-10 p.m. island — after the day-trippers have left and the deer have come down from the hills — is very different from the daytime version.

Getting There

From Tokyo: Nozomi shinkansen to Hiroshima, approximately 4 hours. From Osaka: approximately 1.5 hours. From Kyoto: approximately 2 hours.