We left Tokyo this morning to travel to Hiroshima via bullet train. It was a comfortable trip and the views were beautiful, including Fuji.
Of course we ate ekiben (prepackaged meals designed for travel) on the trip, and mine was the usual pork cutlet sandwich but Kristin’s were more interesting so I’ll show them here.
For starters she had a simple trio of thinly sliced salmon on ginger rice. They were wrapped in real leaves and packed in a faux (actually styrofoam) box. Beautiful presentation!
Her second was this crab rice, which came in a plastic crab-shaped bowl. The ekiben shops at Tokyo station had dozens of different types to choose from and I’m sure on our return trips she’ll get something different again.
The trip took about four hours which is amazing since the distance was over 800 km and takes about 11 hours to drive! For the Australians reading it’s about the distance from Sydney to Melbourne. Imagine doing that by train in only four hours!
The above is the view from our hotel, which is right next to the station. While Hiroshima is small compared to Tokyo (about 1/50th the population) it’s a large city compared to where we live, and from what we saw exploring the downtown this afternoon it’s an interesting one too. As you know Hiroshima is historically important but the reasons we have visited is to see more than the obvious. We’re only here a couple of days but they will be full ones.