Sandankyo and Hiroshima

I woke up and went for another dip in the onsen, a while after I got in. A Japanese man joined me and we started talking. He was asking me where I was from and where I'm going next. So I told him the same as I'll tell anyone reading this. I'm from the Netherlands and today I'll be going to Hiroshima and Kurashiki!
It's actually kinda funny, because he should have known that. He was our driver.
Though I did not recogize him.. shame on me..

Anyway, after the onsen, I went for another traditional Japanese meal. Breakfast this time. And this one.. I do have on photo! Yaaay! So check that one if you wanna know what I ate. After breakfast we went hiking. Through the Sandankyo Gorge. So this was a river of approximately 16 kilomers long, surrounded by mountains. A truly beautiful place! I took a lot of pictures here, and it's a shame that I didn't have a good camera..

So I told the driver where to go this morning and it seems he followed my guidance. We arrived at Hiroshima little after noon where we went to the peace park. A rather peaceful park. In the center of it stands a statue, Sadako's statue. She was a young girl that died of lukemia due to the radiation of the atomic bomb that struct Hiroshima. Her dream was to create a thousand cranes out of paper, and so, there were a lot of origami cranes to be found near there. Really cool pieces of art made with origami cranes.

We walked around this park for a bit, and also around the city. Eventually went to Hiroshima castle as well, which I found really cool looking. Maybe because it was the first castle I had seen in Japan.
In the evening we tried another traditional Japanse food: Okonomiyaki (Hiroshima style). The food was made right in front of our eyes, at the same time for all of us together. I took pictures of most of the stages of the food, but wouldn't be able to actually tell you what was on it. I only know that the Hiroshima style okonomiyaki contains noodles, and the tokyo style, doesn't.

Off to the next hotel! I was just getting ready for bed, as I was dead tired. My feet were killing me. Like they had been doing since day 1. And even now, still are. Anyway, I just crawled into bed in the phone in my hotel room rang. "What the hell did I do wrong?!" I picked up the phone and a sigh of relief left my mouth. It was Ayako, asking me whether I wanted to join the group to a sake bar. Hell yeah!
So we got to this really tiny sort of pub. We had to share some stools, but eventually, everyone got inside. I had a few beers and tried some fried octopus (yuck!) and then went back to bed.

PS. I don't know if the photo's are attached correctly, I accidentally added most of these photo's with Asakusa as its location. Which it definitely is not.