Hiroshima! Part 2

Today ended up being pretty good. Both Ben and I slept in an hour or so later than normal (for me this means 7, for Ben this means I let him sleep until he naturally woke around 11). After that was all exploration -- I feel we covered significant amounts of the city, like the only thing we have not seen that may be worth seeing is the castle...which we could do tomorrow before our bus, maybe.

That said, there is not much to say about the rest of the city. It is pretty, but also kind of dull. The only place really worth mentioning is Hijiyama Park -- which has been my favorite place during this trip, so far. It is a big foresty mountain with a Contemporary Arts Museum and a Manga Library in it. Near the museum are open-air exhibits, free to view, surrounded by the forest. Not to mention the forest itself is absolutely gorgeous. I had the joy of exploring it all and hiking parts of the mountain alone, as Ben and I kind of got annoyed with each other and entered different ways (I am surprised it took this long to happen, we made it a good half of the trip!). We ended up meeting up, and then separating on more jovial terms. For Ben this meant he went back to the hotel to rest. For me this meant I explored the park a bit more, then the residential area near the park, and then got lost going back to the hotel. I ended up almost getting back to the hotel twice, using my own reasoning -- the first time I was at an intersection and chose following a street sign over my own intuition, the second time I was basically just walking down the wrong road. Eventually I called and checked the bus stop we were next to, only to find that I was one stop away so I just walked it in a matter of minutes. It was kind of ridiculous, a tad frightening, but mostly just depressing.

Right now we are doing our laundries, and not much else. Tomorrow we may or may not go to Hiroshima Castle, but probably won't. I think I might get up early and buy shoes, as there is a hole in one of mine that keeps letting water in, but I may put it off until I'm back in Tokyo. Later on we will leave Hiroshima for Kobe! It will be my first daybus in Japan, and mark the return to separate beds for me and Ben! We have been sharing since Kyoto. It is actually a bigger problem during the day, when we want to shove stuff on it or w/e, and I also feel awkward lying on the bed next to Ben if we're both awake. It just seems odd. At night we just kind of pass out on different sides, so it has not been an issue at all. Haha, whatever.