Shortly after waking up, Gabe and I had breakfast at a bakery nearby.
I think it was a bakery.

I made my way to Hiroshima.
Unfortunately I didn’t leave early enough to get there before sunrise, but I still wanted to go to the 広島平和記念碑 (Hiroshima Peace Memorial) anyway.
Once I arrived in Hiroshima, I hopped onto a tram heading to the memorial.

I enjoy trams.
It’s fair to say that I enjoy them a lot.
I like being on them.
I like how they operate.
I like how their networks can be incredibly vast and go on for ages.
I like how quick they can be.
I enjoy trams.

Maybe it has something to do with riding them when I was a young child.

Anyway, I got off at the memorial and spent a few minutes there.
It is a powerful testament to the devotion to peace the Japanese populace work for.
WWII was a pretty nasty event, but for some reason, whilst I admired and respected it and what it stood for, I didn’t feel overwhelmed or taken aback or saddened.
Seeing it didn’t affect me.
Still, it should be treated with reverence.

I then switched to wandering mode and… well… wandered around for a while.
I came across a HMV at one point.

For anyone in Australia: remember those?

Yes, it was pricey.

With that being said, the range was excellent.
I’m fairly certain that this one put the range of the ones we had to shame.

I bought Hear You by Toe, Release by ESNO, and 藍のうた by カナタ, after being able to listen to them whilst in store.
Whilst Hear You was the superior out of the three, I think they were all worthwhile purchases.

Last week I was reading about Stanislaw Lem and, despite discovering this before, discovered that one of his books was called His Master’s Voice.

It had me wondering if it was possible that HMV was named after the novel.

It wasn’t.

After some more wandering (and a brief lunch featuring a hot dog), and purchasing a new strap and some plectrums from a guitar store I came across, I headed back to Miyajimaguchi.

Once I was back at the hostel, I spoke to the staff briefly about what I’d been up to.
I then spoke to Gabe a bit more about where we should go next, before discussing going to a beach on 厳島 (Itsukushima).

He told me where it was and said he may head there.
I told him I’d go check it out.
I borrowed a bike (it was called Udon) from the hostel and headed out to the island.

Once I was there, I headed to the beach, stopping on occasion to enjoy some of the fantastic views that I had the luxury of seeing.

At one point I saw someone burning some wood (I imagine this has something to do with oyster farming).
I took some pictures, then continued cycling.

It didn’t take me too long to reach the beach.

Reach the beach.

Reach… the beach…

Nope. Don’t have anything.

The waves were calm, which was nice, but it didn’t appeal to me at the time.
I had a strong desire that day to have waves around me, but as that was not to be the case, I lost a lot of the interest I had.
When I saw that the showers were locked, I lost what little interest in going for a swim I had left.
It’s a pretty small thing to have as the deciding factor as to whether you’d go for a swim or not, but for me it was enough to not make me want to.

Oh. There were some deer around the area.
I had been seeing them when I was away from the town, as is to be expected.
However, it was nice to see them there as it made it feel a little less near civilisation.

I headed back to Miyajimaguchi, then, based on a map provided by the hostel that pointed out some places of interest, cycled to 江波山公園 (Ebayama Park) so I could get a good vantage point for the sunset.

Now that was a good, lengthy trek.

I spent most of it cycling through suburban areas, occasionally asking people if I was heading in the right direction as I thought I may have passed the park.

At one point I stopped and spent some time walking around an oyster farm as it was low tide and I had not seen one up close before.

Hearing all the oysters make crackling sounds was unsettling to an extent.

I reached a point where the road ended at the t-intersection.

After asking someone for the direction of the park and them pointing me to where I had to go, I continued cycling… right past where I was meant to go.

The sunset had already started, so I took some pictures during that period.
I’m not too sure how long I was cycling for after getting directions.
It was probably about fifteen minutes.

I ended up asking someone for directions as I was pretty sure I had missed the park.
I was right, but they didn’t know where it was.
Someone overheard me asking and then cycled with me to where I needed to go.
I was incredibly grateful.

I got to where I wanted to be as fast as I could.
Coming to a set of stairs, I hopped off and began to make my ascent.
Sadly, it was a few minutes too late.

As I was going up, I talked to a person about language and the difficulties of it.
It was a short, but enjoyable chat.

Despite the sun mostly being set, once we reached the top, I was able to get excellent views of some of the area around me.
There was an excellent view of Hiroshima from there.
Despite my location not being up high, it looked very small.

After a few minutes, the person I spoke to headed off.
I spent a little while longer taking photos and enjoying the view before making my way back.

Once I was on Udon again, I began to hunt for ほの湯 (Honoyu Onsen [I think]) as, based on the map, it was close by.

I asked someone for directions and they told me I needed to go back down the road that I had come down that ended at the t-intersection.

I had a feeling that they didn’t know where the one I was looking for was, but I went down the road anyway as part of me just wanted to head back to the hostel.
I probably missed ほの湯.
I ended up cycling back to the hostel as quickly as I could as it was night-time and I wanted to rest.

Once I got back, Gabe asked me if I wanted a drink.
I told him that I wanted to rest as I was buggered.
The staff seemed shocked to hear how far I cycled.
He told me that Malcolm Turnbull had challenged Tony Abbott for leadership of the Liberal Party.
I told him I would have a shower and be down as quickly as possible.

I can’t speak for how Gabe feels about politics.
With that being said, I feel that he is as interested in it as I am.
I can get pretty passionate about politics at times.
It was something I was introduced to at a very young age (something I’m quite thankful for).
Generally I don’t throw my support behind any parties as I feel that a good portion of them are terrible.
I do feel that some have good policies though.

Anyway, I bought a beer for  ¥800; an incredibly cheap price for how big the beer was (it was larger than a pint).
I don’t normally drink beer as I find the taste to be pretty nasty, but this was important.
Luckily it was (for me) quite a good beer.
It wasn’t anywhere near as bitter or sharp tasting as what I’ve had in the past.
I found it to be fairly smooth and light.
We had pizzas as well. Those were still good.

Whilst we were following the challenge, I went upstairs to find other Australians in the hostel to let them know of the turn of events.
There were some who came down soon after, but as they weren’t into politics, they weren’t following it.

Eventually it was revealed that Malcolm Turnbull was the new Liberal Party leader.
The news was bittersweet, as these things should generally be.
Whilst I enjoyed Abbott’s onion-eating antics (the strength of that feat should have been enough to crown him ruler of Australia), he had most certainly overstayed his welcome.
There was, and still is, a lot of uncertainty with Malcolm Turnbull.
I do think he can do an excellent job, but at the same time I also think that it may be a bit too late for that.

Anyway, Gabe and I were happy.

Gabe had periodically mentioned how he bought ten shots and how we had to drink them.
I made the wrong decision in choosing not to believe him.

Soon after the leadership spill was over, the shots came out.
Half were tequila; the other half, vodka.
The reason Gabe bought so many was that they were 100 each.

We had two or three each and then gave the rest away.
It was just a bit too much to have.

Gabe and I spent a good portion of the remainder of the night talking to other people in the hostel about why the change of leadership was a good thing.

This lead to me talking about problems I saw in Australia as a whole.
The other Australians said that they didn’t say the same things I did, but shortly after admitted they hadn’t seen much of Australia outside of Melbourne.

On a quick side note, I’m not going to get into the details of what I see as problematic in Australia.
I will say that the issues are entirely fixable and I hope that the people of Australia, myself included, begin to work together as a whole to fix them.

Anyway, we all talked about other stuff as well, until about two in the morning.
Gabe had gone to sleep much earlier.
I had been planning on doing a sixty kilometre cycle on the suggestion of a friend of mine.
I was going to do it after waking up in the morning, but when I found out how long it would take to get to where I had to start, I reneged on the idea.
Staying up for a while probably had something to do with it as well.

After saying goodnight to those who were still awake, I went to bed, hoping to get enough sleep to be functioning in the morning.