Today we got up and the weather looked much nicer so we headed out to the Shinkansen “Shin” station to catch our train to Hiroshima. We had a 10am appointment for the Mazda factory tour and I thought I had given us enough time but when we got to the Hiroshima station to transfer to our local train we found it didn’t leave until 9:46 and also it was delayed surprisinly enough as all of our trains have been on schedule almost to the second. Anyway we took the train to the station for the Mazda factory and as we came out of the station another couple from New Zealand saw the confused looks on our faces and asked if we were trying to find the Mazda headquarters for the tour as they weren’t sure where to go either. I had pretty good directions from the website and we saw a few promising signs and at the end of the road (think alley in the US) we turned the corner and there was a big building with the Mazda logo on it. The parking lot leading up to it appeared to be an employee lot and surprisingly enough I think I only saw one non-Mazda car in there. (Todd it was like Canada all over again you would have loved it ;P) I had called from the Hiroshima station to let them know we might be a few minutes late and they had said they could get us on a bus at 10:30 but we arrived at the entrance at about 10:02 with the other couple that was late just as the rest of the 15 or so people in the tour were coming out the front door. We gavve them our names, got our badges and loaded onto the bus to start the tour. We couldn’t take any pictures on the bus but we drove past several factory buildings and 2 or 3 car staging garages that each held up to 11,000 vehicles waiting to be shipped around the country and the world. When we arrived at the museum we were left to look at several old and new Mazda vehicles for a bit while they got a film ready for us to watch. We watched a short film on Mazda old and new before heading up to the main museum. The museum consisted of several areas with lots of old Mazda vehicles charting through the years, a rotary engine history, and a section on the production of a vehicle. They had the Mazda 787B which won Le Mans there and one of the coolest parts was the RX8 which was in pieces with each part displayed on the walls around the shell car. The next part of the tour was a visit to the actual final assembly line. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed but some of the interesting things we saw were the engine/drivetrain mounting, dashboard installation, windshield installation (all by robots) and several other parts of the process. What was cool was on this one line several different models were being assembled, maybe every model but I definitely saw Atenzas(6s), Acelas(3s), Roadsters(Miatas), and several small non-US models. When we reached the end of the line we came into a room with a view onto Mazda’s private port and some of the ships waiting to carry cars all over the world. The end of the tour had several concept vehicles including a coupld using hydrogen rotary engines, special safety specific vehicles, and an interesting futuristic concept car that I can’t seem to recall the name. This pretty much concluded the tour and they took us back to the gift shop area then back by bus to the main office where we started. I grabbed a few brochures, etc from the info desk in the main office then we were off to find lunch as in our hurry we hadn’t eaten breakfast. We went back to the Hiroshima station and I figured we might as well head over near the Peace Park for lunch as that was next on our itinerary. We caught a street car over to the A-bomb dome stop and got off after assuring another family from Australia that we were at the right stop. We looked around to see if we could see any obvious places to eat but didn’t see any so we headed down the main road and saw a mall but nothing in there seemed to be what we were looking for so we continued down and saw a smaller side road that looked like it might have some places and a girl was handing out flyers that looked promising so we headed the direction she pointed and after we stopped looking confused she came running up to show us where to go. It was a teppanyaki restaurant which you all know well as that is what Shogun’s is more or less. In Japan this basically means yout table is a grill and I think sometimes they cook your food in front of you but in this case they heat up the grill and bring you the food already cooked but set it on the grill to keep it hot. This was also our first Japanese restaurant where we had to take off shoes and put on slippers and sat at a low table with our feet in a depression underneath. I ordered okonomayaki again as Hiroshima is famous for it but this time I got a twist where the cabbage is replaced by leeks (I forgot to write down the exact name). Becky has yaki soba with pork which reminded me almost of pad thai but with Japanese flavorings. It was all very good and the flyer we had gotten had a coupon for free ice cream so we enjoyed that to finish things off. We headed back out with more energy and went to see the Peace Park area. We started at the A-bomb dome which is the remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall which was almost directly beneath the hypocenter of the blast. After looking around it we crossed the “T” shaped bridge which was the aiming point for the bomb and went into the park itself. There are several monuments of which probably the most touching is the children’s monument which memorializes all the children who were killed in the attack. The design is based on the story of Sadako Sasaki who was 2 during the bombing and several years later died of leukemia. You can read more of her story elsewhere but she folded paper cranes to bring her wish for life true and people ever since have brought thousands of paper cranes to the monument in her memory. We continued to the other memorials including the eternal flame and the cenotaph before going into the Peace Museum. The museum had a first floor which covered the history of Hiroshima, the war leading up to the attack and the initial aftermath. The second floor leads to the main museum which has artifacts and displays of the victims from the initial blasts and the lasting effects on the victims throughout the years. At the end of the tour we went to get a drink and sit for a second as we had been walking a lot before seeing the last few monuments. We called Leah after this to get the info on Molly Malone’s, an Irish Pub in Hiroshima that they really like, and we went to a get a cab but couldn’t get the driver to understand where we were wanting to go so we had to get move on. We decided with the little light left we would go see the Hiroshima castle (rebuilt in 1958 of course) that was just a few blocks away. We walked through there rather quickly and took a few photos then headed back towards the JR station. As we were walking we saw the mall that Leah had said the pub was by so we jumped on a streetcar and headed down the road a few stops and walked toward the mall. After looking just a bit we saw the sign and headed up to grab a bite to eat. I had fish and chips and Becky had bangers and mash both of which were very good if a little strange to be eating in Japan. We also had the bread pudding for dessert though Becky also got her own dessert since it was ladies’ night. After this we headed back to the streetcar station (just one detour at a pet store to look at the cute puppies) and took it back to the JR station to head back to Iwakuni for our last night here. When we got back I packed up most of my things preparing to move on to Kobe tomorrow.