The Quinn Family Excellent Adventure: Goodbye Kokura Japan - Hello Hiroshima Japan - March 25

The Shinkansen to Hiroshima was awesome and fast. It's pretty impressive where these tracks are built. Much of them are elevated from the ground so you get a birds eye view of the landscapes. At these speeds you also don't notice the tunnels the trains pass through until it's quite suddenly dark. Somehow, the GPS and internet works for most of the tunnels. Some tunnels you can feel the train dipping down a bit and there is a noticeable pressure change. They must be going quite deep. We arrived in Hiroshima a few hours before our AirBnB check in time. That turned out to be a problem a few times. With 10-11 AM checkout times, fast Shinkansens and 3 PM check in times, we often have time gaps. With so much gear to carry, we needed to find a chill spot. The Hiroshima Station had a nice Starbucks off in the corner. A corner seat provided a great place to pile up our stuff and chill for an hour or so. Bic Camera was immediately beside the station. While to girls hung out, I went and check out the store. More on that later. We soon decided to take a chance with the public transit. Google maps is sort of helpful in at least identifying the location and number. After a short tram ride, we were a 5 minute walking distance to our next AirBnB. Key instructions were simple enough and soon we were touring our new home. KT's room was also the "dining" area with a very short table. Her bed was folded away being closer to a traditional Japanese bed (Futon on a Tatami floor). Michelle and I had a traditional western bed stuffed into a bit of a tight spot. The kitchen was super tiny but we needed very little. The Washing machine, shower/bathroom were cool with so many interesting Japanese efficiency ideas. We were kinda hungry so we hit the nearest Lawsons or 711 type convenience store. The food choices are once again epic. Michelle and I walked to see what we could see. Little did we know that our AirBnB was so close to the Atomic Dome and many other huge tourist spots. It was a really special spot.

Within a 10 minute walk from our AirBnB, a nuclear bomb was detonated 600 meters from the ground destroying most of the city. It's shocking walking around with that in mind. You can feel the respect, mindfulness and awareness of the local people and those that are visiting. We visited it several times being so close. Hiroshima castle was close as well. Michelle and KT visited it and discovered a special show called Digitized Hiroshima was available in the evening. I have been eyeing a replacement eReader for a while as Michelle's broke in Indonesia and she was using mine. Getting an Amazon Kindle had turned out difficult for several countries now. Bic Camera had plenty of choices of a Canadian designed Kobo. Cool. I went to the Hiroshima Station store a few times to nail down a choice. Bic Camera is quite insane. There are multiple floors each packed with epic choices. It's totally overwhelming. You can't browse otherwise you would be there for a month. The staff were very helpful despite my poor Japanese. I picked the Kobo Forma. It had great reviews.

The next evening we scored tickets for the Digitized Hiroshima show. What a setup that was. Inflated eggs with integrated lighting and motion sensors were scrambled (ha ha) all over the forest. Outdoor speakers were sprinkled in the forest along side them. The speakers played a stereophonic audio source that rippled through the forest. It was really cool. Special lighting was present for the building and trees. It was a little tough to see at times and being in a forest, the ground was a little trippy. Along the perimeter wall we found a calligraphy water cloud display and a cool kids animated character thing. It was wild.

KT decided she wanted to see a cat island. It took several research days and some heavy Googling to find something that worked. Enoshima in Kanagawa Prefecture was near Tokyo. It was far too close and simple to get too. Being a busy time of the year, it did not make the cut. Tashiro-jima Island, Miyagi Prefecture sounded good. It was accessible only by ferry and had accomidations on the island. Sadly getting through to arrange these accommodations was really difficult. Japanese only web sites and unanswered emails left us with Aoshima in Ehime Prefecture. Being close to the city of Matsuyama it was the best fit. It was a long way from Tokyo being a 10 hour journey. We would have to shorten our time in Tokyo and plan accommodations for at least a few days. The girls were into it so the plan began. I was kinda tired of lugging all these large bags around so I researched a solution. There are several companies around that offer places to store stuff. I installed and setup a popular App called. BagBnB which sounded cool. They coordinate city based coffee shops, restaurant locations and other spots with storage options. I had to think carefully when and where and decided on a place near Tokyo station called Beef Up Tokyo. It was only 600 Yen per bag per day. I booked with an extra day just in case. The plan was in place and now I could relax knowing our Cat Island trip would be with much less stuff. With HyperDia I planned all our major trips including Matsuyama. We just needed to activate our JR Pass and book a bunch of reserved seats.

We had earlier found the cutest little Coffee shop called 36 Hostel Coffee and Books. http://36hostel.com/cafe/ They had the cutest dog so we visited it with KT on JR Pass activation day. The store is really cute and tiny. There is space for perhaps 6 to sit. Books, art, interesting items are everywhere. The owner makes everything from fresh coffee to cute little sandwiches. He gets kinda busy as he is by himself. We though we ordered 3 hot drinks to go. Oops, we had to stay longer and play with his dog. Although we arrived at the Hiroshima Station a little later than planned, the JR ticket office had only 1 person in the tourist line. Thank goodness. I had checked this line a few days earlier to find it was filled with 20-30 people. Within 5 minutes we had our passes activated. The counter person was kind enough to arrange for me a few future Shinkansen reserved tickets as well. I wanted to do them all but the lineup had gotten huge. No worries. We somehow came at the perfect time to get this process done. Yay, with our JR Pass activated and reserved seat tickets in hand, we were ready to head to Kyoto.

KT's bed, to be