Hirsoshima, part the second

On our last day, we took a rather long time to get left (no seriously, we almost missed the check out time), but then we went to Hiroshima castle, which was super interesting.  Well, I thought it was anyway, my companions elected to go ahead and meet me at the art museum.

castle entrance.  notice the moat?  there actually used to be three of them, but the other two got filled in over the years.

This is the foundation of the headquarters of the 4th division of the army during WWII.  By this point, most of the original buildings from the 12th century or whenever had either burned or been torn down.

Reconstruction of the main tower of the castle, like Osaka Castle it has within it a museum on the history of Hiroshima, which was really terribly interesting.  I learned all about life in a castle town :)

One of the cool things I learned was how they built up the banks of the moat, planning to knock them down and thus flood any invading armies.  That never happened, due to lack of invading armies, but it was a pretty good plan.

The castle grounds have been converted into a lovely little park.

I rather like Hiroshima Castle.  It's a lot flatter and easier to get around than Osaka Castle.  Well, that comparison really applies to Hiroshima and Osaka cities as well.

We grabbed lunch at a ramen place, then spent the afternoon in the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum.  You can read all about it here: http://www1.hpam-unet.ocn.ne.jp/english/.   Hiroshima has 3 or so art museums, but we only had time for the one...  They had three exhibits.  One was a traveling Van Gogh exhibit that had been in Kobe, but I hadn't seen it.  I'm pretty sure I would have appreciated it more if there were more explanations in English...  The second was part of a larger project called Art Arch Hiroshima 2013, and I really enjoyed that one.  It was peace themed and very moving.  The third exhibit was free and featured objects made by Japanese Americans in interment camps (is that the proper name?) during WWII.  I was amazed at what they were able to make with found items- dolls and chairs and chess sets.  all kinds of things..

Next to the museum is a Japanese garden (http://shukkeien.jp/), which I spent some time wandering around in.  I love Japanese gardens. 

This particular garden is famous because there's 10 or 12 mini islands in the little pond.

We set off for Hiroshima station around 4 and began our long journey back.  I'll tell you later about why it took us much longer to return than to get there.