Yokoso Hiroshima....

Day 1 and Day 2

Sunday 25 September – Monday 26 September

Higashi-Hiroshima: 25 degrees sunny and humid

The first day of the trip consisted of a 24 hour plus trip to Hiroshima. Melbs to Honkers, Honkers to Osaka and then 3 shinkansens (bullet trains) and a bus ride to arrive at the Hiroshima International Centre.

A long day of travelling, but great people on the trip. Names have been hard to remember and I forget how I’ve told which story to….guess I’ll be repeating myself a lot! Have found some fellow footy tragics and we’ve already decided that our day on Miyajima will be spent trying to watch the Granny. Go Cats!!

We have our own rooms (thankfully!!) which are fully equipped with a TV, DVD player, fridge and our own bathrooms. Couldn’t cope with sharing. There are laundries on each floor and the soon-to-be-frequented beer vending machine!

My room....

The staff here are FANTASTIC!! We’ve had an orientation tour and there are all sorts of facilities available:  a cafeteria, gym, soccer field, full equipped library, computer rooms, billiard tables, massage chairs, bikes and more!! The library has some fantastic books on Hiroshima and hopefully I can find some to bring home: real gut-wrenching stuff, but the kind of stuff that needs to be remembered and told!

The lovely librarian has sorted us out with maps and we’ve established where all the important things are: shops, supermarkets, post office and the main shipping areas. Now if we can find a couple of izakaya and sushi ya……I’ll be sorted!!

We have also been placed into our language groups for the three weeks that we are here. I’m in the ‘top’ group with two other people!! How’s that for a bit of one on one instruction!!

After our lesson today, we headed into Saijo, the town closest to where we are staying. A bit of a wander and some grocery shopping and then back for dinner. The consensus seems to be that dinners need to spent elsewhere (think dodgy cafeteria food….lots of curry rice). The evening was rounded out by beers on the balcony and time well spent in massage chairs.

I’m having a blast! However, we have six hours of language study tomorrow…..who said this was a junket????