Hiroshima (2 of 2): Stay for the city

✍️: Jan 📸: Erin & Jan

We got to see a lot of Japan, but I think we saved the best for last. I loved Hiroshima. The main draw for tourists like us is undoubtably the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Peace Memorial Park. And rightfully so. They are somber but necessary places to experience.

But the city is also eclectic coffee shops and intimate sake bars with incredibly friendly staff. It’s home to a baseball team with avid fans. Hiroshima’s okonomiyaki (fried-noodle pancake), unique even in Japan, can’t be beat. And at least one Thomas the Tank Engine bus ferries young students wearing matching hats.

Hiroshima is definitely the city we’d most want to visit again in Japan despite seeing its primary tourists spots.

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Osaka: Noodles, noise and cry-worthy ‘coco’ croissants

✍️: Erin 📸: Jan & Erin

Imagine a Las Vegas casino meeting Pokemon on steroids in an IMAX theater. Then crowds of people, seemingly oblivious to the aural abuse, quietly weaving around each other and occasionally stopping to look at frying, fragrant seafood. Or maybe a purse or socks.

This goes on for blocks, in all directions, in one of the open-air street markets in Osaka, a port city of nearly 2 million people on Japan’s Pacific coast. But then, suddenly, a tourist’s reprieve.

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