I have my laptop again! This is still going to be a quicker post just so I can get some of the details down while they’re fresh, but I am still planning a larger photo dump sometime soon.
So the Inari shrine was fun, but for me mostly more of the same. We went there kind of late hoping to go down after dark, but Cassie wasn’t feeling well, so she and I left early after only going part way up.
The next day, we were off to Hiroshima!
The city was gorgeous; even the A-bomb memorials were hauntingly beautiful. Unfortunately, it was raining pretty heavily our first night there, so other than visiting a Book Off, we didn’t do much.
And then in the morning, it was raining worse. Much worse.
We woke up around 9am to our phones buzzing with landslide warnings! Luckily none of them were for the area we were in, but by 11am, literally the entire city other than our one small island was under landslide evacuation orders. It was crazy.
But then by 1pm, it had cleared up entirely, and we walked around like nothing had ever been wrong! We went to a castle, walked around outside a soccer stadium, it was great!
In the evening we went to a nearby izakaya that was fantastic – delicious food and a very friendly a talkative mastaa running the place. The guy at the end of our bar was from Cincinnati originally, so we had a good time chatting with him, too. It was great!
Then it was time to say goodbye to the McFarlands, as they headed back to Tokyo to go home, and we moved further south to Fukuoka.
But not before we got to see some of a festival they were putting on in Hiroshima!
It was a big party! They had paddleboarders and hulu dancers from Hawaii, they had Brazilian sandwich vendors, they had live music and festival games… it was a great sendoff!
I’m writing this from Fukuoka now, so I’ll have more to share soon. Until then!