Hiroshima

We fell a little bit in love with Hiroshima when we came here last year and so had to make it a good part of our trip this time. While Hiroshima isn't exactly a name you associate with fun times, this city has all the goods.

Hiroshima okonomiyaki is incredible. Different to the Osaka variety, it features noodles along with the regular ingredients and is cooked in layers. Our favourite spot to hit one is at Rokutsobuya – in the back streets near our hotel.

Sitting at the grill downing beers while your dinner is being cooked in front of you is one of life's great pleasures. Apparently Rikutsobuya are famous for their gizzards and other grilled organs. Unfortunately after one okonomyaki we couldn't even think about tasting their speciality...

In tradition of the blog, we also indulged in “threesies”, our favourite meal before the dollar crashed. Here's our cake set from a joint near Tokyu Hands. Fabulously frenchy.

On our first night there the Australian peso crashed to 55 yen. We consoled ourselves and our basically halved bank balances with a six pack of tall boys - store bought booze is still the cheapness - in the hotel room and wandered around the city aimlessly, too scared to spend a single cent.

Our first stop on Saturday morning was the Hiroshima Food festival at the castle. Hundreds of stalls, hundreds of thousands of hungry people looking for free samples. Our kind of festival!

We picked up some sweet showbags...

Baked goods (we'd already slammed the four donuts before taking this pic)

Lottee – we also got to play pokies with this fun filled bag.

The local TV station is also in the castle grounds. Studio tour! This is Lu on the set of 'Evening 4'.

Next stop was the Hiroshima Contemporary Art Museum. Lucky for us the Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition opened that day – as part of the Hiroshima Art Prize. he does a range of things - but some of the most impressive are the pieces he makes using black gunpowder and fireworks. At the food festival earlier, we'd seen some black fireworks and had no idea it was one of his pieces. His show is incredible! You may have seen his explosive work at such small events as the Beijing Olympics Opening and Closing ceremonies. Anyone passing through Hiroshima before 12 January must check it out.

This the few from the art museum outside.

The artist was wandering around the exhibition and gave a nod to Will. We hoped that meant we were in for the exclusive launch party that night... but couldn't find him again before the museum closed.

That night we decided to check out Okonomi-mura, a building full of okonomi restaurants, next to the Okonomyaki Republic Building, another building full of okomomi restaurants. Surprisingly, it was full of drunkos and foreigners. The okonomi was good – but nothing on Rokutsobuya.

We spent the eve wandering the streets, checking out the nightlife in between visits back to the hotel to “refuel” before ending up at a cute little bar called Lotus, where we took off our shoes to drink beer and ate some fried seaweed wasabi.

Sunday was relaxing times, post-Suntory times. Wandering the streets and the peace park, which is a central focus of the city for family activities and Sunday events.

This is the bridge that was the target of the A-bomb, that's A-bomb dome in the background - one of the few buildings left standing after the blast as it was directly underneath. It's been preserved.

We walked across to the west-syde and lunched at this fabulous little place called Organ-za. We sat under the mezzanine and chilled for hours. Recommended.

Another special mention for our hotel “Hotel Active!”. Y7500 a night with free buffet breakfast and coffee machine and fancy hotel rooms and all round great place to stay.

This one's for Mel. Walking around - we saw this little gem. There's heaps of thee kinds of shops hawking the loudest all over print hoodies going around.

Next – Miyajima and the reason why Luella can no longer walk down stairs.