the final one on Hiroshima

So, as I may have said before, we went to Hiroshima on this deal, right?  Well, part of the the deal was you can't take the bullet train all the way back from Hiroshima city to Kobe, you have to take the local trains to the edge of Hiroshima Prefecture, about 2 - 2.5 hours, and then catch the bullet train.

At first I was kind of like "Well, that's annoying," but then as we got going we got to see some lovely countryside and small-town Japan.  Remember how I said it was hard to see anything when you're on the bullet train?  Yeah, this totally made up for it.  So what we have here is a bunch of pictures from random places we passed through and changed trains at.  They aren't really in order.

if we had a car, we could go see waterfalls and things

this little tiny stop, about 40min- 1 hr outside of Hiroshima city, is so small you have to show your ticket to the station master to get out (if you have an ICOCA card you can scan that, but there's nowhere to put the paper tickets).  Basically, you only come out here if you're going to the airport...  It was our first train change.

farms!! (I'm currently watching a movie set in Hokkaido where the main character is staying on a farm and they regularly go out and confide their worries to the cows.  I love it)

Our second train change...

as we were going along admiring the mountains, we suddenly came to the ocean and realized "Hey, those aren't just mountains, they're islands!"  Even after being here for 2 years, that kind of thing still surprises me.

Didn't stop here, but it's a great name :)

Final train change.  To the Shinkansen!

Fukuyama station, waiting for the train.

Famous people from overseas advertising random Japanese stuff is both fairly common and fairly amusing.

We got back to Kobe, did one last train change to the subway and got home about 10 (well, I did anyway).

I liked Hiroshima, I really did.  Although there were a few other things I would have liked to do and see, I think 3 days was a good amount of time to be there as a tourist.  It seems like a nice city of decent size.  I probably wouldn't mind living there, although of all the places in Japan I could live, it isn't number one.  What can I say, I miss the country  :)

I feel like there were a couple other comments I wanted to make, but I'm not thinking of them right now... oh well.