Day 7 - Hiroshima

We woke this morning to a glorious day with Mt Fuji looking spectacular. We could really have done with another day in this lovely place but we are on tour and it was soon time to climb aboard the bus for the 40 min journey to the station for our bullet train experience. 

Mt Fuji at 6:14 am from our bedroom

A couple of hours later

Everywhere here is very clean and when we arrived at the station there was a little man with a hand held vacuum scurrying around ensuring that there wasn't a speck of dirt anywhere. We were soon organised on the platform in neat orderly lines as marked on the ground. We were in carriage 13 and so we stood in the appropriate places ready to board. A whole minute is allowed for getting on/off and it's a bit of a worry when you're stood waiting to get on and there seems to be endless people getting off. We all made it though and found our allocated seats. I don't think I've ever been on a cleaner more efficient train. The head of the Japanese rail system recently resigned because over the course of a year the trains throughout the whole system had a total delay time of 70 seconds.  I'm not sure any trains at home arrive on time.  Why is it that we invented trains and yet have such an inefficient appalling service?

After an hour and 15 mins we arrived at our changeover station and quickly got off, crossed the platform, found our places to queue up and waited 5 mins for our onward train. It did of course arrive on time and we all made sure that we got on quickly so no heads will roll because we dilly dallied. 

After a smooth two and a half hours we arrived at Hiroshima and our new guide was waiting for us. She shepherded us through a very busy station and walked us to our hotel which is adjacent. For some reason we'd been upgraded from the 4* Crowne Plaza to the 5* Sheraton so none of us were complaining.  We dropped our bags in the lobby and headed back to the station for a local train to take us to the quay in order to get a boat to Miyajima Island. We visited the Itsukushima Shrine which dates from 1118 but we could really have done with spending a whole day exploring. It was also a shame that the tide was out so we didn't see the Shrine or the O-torii Gate at its best.  

The bridge where you cross from one life to another