Today we moved onto Hiroshima. We skipped breakfast and had rice balls, milk doughnuts and Japanese Powerade stuff called Sweat. I also tried a smoothie looking thing. It tasted like a smoothie but watered down with a bit of salt. We were about to walk the 15 mins to the station after seeing the line for the shuttle bus inside, but the shuttle pulled up and I told Gus to jump right in before anyone could come out. I wasn’t playing this morning. We got to the station and got Gus his Starbucks. I got an iced coffee thing. It’s not like Australian coffee. It’s all automated and looks like American drip coffee. I don’t know if it’s a Starbucks or Japan thing. I haven’t seen many coffee places other than chains at stations. I think most people get it from vending machines TBH.

The train was a N700 Supreme. It’s much nicer than the N700A. It’s got improved vibration dampening which you can really feel. The E6 was probably the smoothest ride but I don’t know if that’s because of lots of straight tracks.

The ride between Shin-Osaka and Hiroshima was 1 hr 21 min. I was trying to search some stuff on my phone, but I’d say 70% of the run was in tunnels. They were long enough for mobile signals to die. I gave up and rested my eyes.

Hiroshima has a lot of busses and electric street cars. I’m going to read about the difference between them and trams.

I saw other people struggling with suitcases trying to drag them onto the street cars and it didn’t look fun. I tried to Uber, but the stupid location wasn’t being detected. There were taxis but I didn’t have cash. I’ve found out that the only ATMs that work with my cards are the 7 Eleven Bank ones. The other ones just spit the cards back out. I got some cash money, walked around in a big circle again, got some fruit, sauce, mustard, and mayonnaise.

We then found our way back to taxis and jumped in a little Prius. It was only $10 but it was so much easier than juggling everything. We got to our hotel and it’s a bit nicer than I expected. We roll up in shorts and t shirt and they have people are coming out to unpack the taxi for us. They took all our stuff from us on a trolly while we checked in. We were told we could have breakfast in one of two restaurants: the Japanese style or western. We were shown the cake shop in the foyer (all but one place had a cake shop). We get to the room followed by the bag trolly and it’s all very nice. But the thing that proves it’s fancy is the phone next to the toilet.

Gus was a bit worn out so I went for a walk outside. I saw people rugging up before going outside and I was still in shorts and t shirt. It was ok. I mean a hoodie unzipped would have been ok but I wouldn’t have gone to a puffer jacket like the peeps at the hotel. I found a big 7 Eleven and Starbucks across the road for Gus. The museums are only a block away. It’s odd to think 78 years ago there was nothing here.

We had some room service for dinner so Gus could try his sauce and mustard. I got him a vegetarian Power Salad to get something other than potato and rice in his guts.

Bonus: His vegetarian Power Salad came with sliced chicken on top.