It was our longest excursion, 340 km to Hiroshima.  After a dash to Shin-Osaka in personal-record-breaking time (32 mins), we boarded a Sakura Shinkansen, which covered the distance in 90 minutes, at a top speed of 290 kph.  I wish we had a train network like this.  I would have saved years of my life spent commuting.

We boarded the Loop Sightseeing Bus, which after the speed of the Shinkansen, was interminably slow; but eventually it dropped us at the Atomic Bomb Dome and Peace Park, which is of course what everyone comes to see. The Dome, with its tortured, twisted metal, and piles of brick and rubble, is a stark symbol of what happened in Hiroshima, and a very sobering sight.  I was relieved to see that almost without exception, people were not taking selfies or striking poses; just taking respectful photographs.

We moved on to the Peace Park, with its many symbolic monuments and memorials.  There is a flame which will not be extinguished until all nuclear weapons are gone from the earth; unfortunately that’s going to be burning for the foreseeable future.  There is an underground hall which serves as a register, recording the names and images of the thousands who died.  It contains some stunning, and poignant, black and white photographs taken just a few days after the explosion.

We planned to visit the museum, but the queue was long, so we decided to come back later in the day.  Instead, we headed well and truly away from the tourist trail, catching a local train further up the valley, to the small, neat town of Seno, just under 30 minutes away.  Why Seno?  Well, because the local authorities decided in their wisdom, that the town needed a suspended monorail, or “dangle train”, to carry people from the bottom of the hill to the top.  An admirable aim, given the steepness of the climb – but perhaps overkill.  Anyway, a stunning series of white pylons was erected, cutting a swathe through the sleepy streets.   Part people-mover, part rollercoaster, mostly white elephant, as it is slated for closure at the end of the year, to be replaced by more utilitarian, but far less fun, electric buses.  The clientele today was almost exclusively school kids.

We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ride one of only 8 dangle trains that exist in the world (most are in Germany but three are here in Japan), so off we went.  We got chatting to a very friendly young Japanese guy who spoke excellent English, thanks to a year spent in Vancouver as an exchange student.  He quizzed us about our travels and seemed quite knowledgeable about Australia, which he hopes to visit next year.  We enjoyed watching the rural scenery, punctuated by other small towns – but none of the others had a Dangle Train.

Once in Seno, a nice lady helped us buy the tickets, for the princely sum of $3.40 each.  This makes the Sentosa cable car price look extortionate.  Soon we were on board, dangling away beneath the overhead track, and hoping that the maintenance budget was still intact.

The track is certainly an impressive piece of engineering.  At the top station, we walked downhill a little to admire the structure and the valley view, and of course to watch the other Dangle Trains whizz past.  We sat on a small wooden bench in a park on the side of a Japanese mountain, with not another person in sight except for a couple of boys on their way home.  It made a very pleasant change from the crowds everywhere else.

But of course we had to return to Hiroshima.  Once there, we reboarded the tourist bus, which had not gotten any quicker during the course of the day, and headed for the museum.  No queues to get in, but people were all congregated in one section, where everyone is funnelled through a series of corridors, and we found ourselves shuffling slowly through a throng, unable to get close to a lot of the displays.  The museum’s contents were very similar to that of Nagasaki, but we found Nagasaki was easier to connect with, with its less elaborate building and simpler style. 

Finally after another smooth ride on the Shinkansen, we arrived back at our little apartment in Osaka, almost exactly 12 hours after leaving it this morning.