TacoCat’s Travels #146 (Hiroshima): Jetting Off and Gaming On! 🎮

Hey Hive!

If you missed the last couple of posts, I just finished recounting our short weekend trip to Kuala Lumpur back in March 2019! Sean got invited to attend a banquet sponsored by FX Primus and we took it as an opportunity to take a short trip to KL and visit friends and family too! It was very chill and we got to eat lots of delicious food, and even took a picture with an amazing singer!

The next trip after that about a month later in April 2019, when we traveled back to our favourite country, Japan, but this time we visited a whole new region - Hiroshima! Sean had won some free air tickets to Hiroshima from a lucky draw sponsored by one of the local banks in Singapore, DBS! Since we've never been, we decided that was a good chance to explore the Chūgoku region!

7 April 2019. Sunday.

We were taking an overnight flight so it was practically midnight by the time we arrived at the airport!

We just hung around the airport after checking in taking a nice stroll through the airport. I think this was in Terminal 2 since all the budget airlines take off from there. Most of it was luxury shops and fast food restaurants so I didn't really bother taking many photos.

We boarded the plane at around 2am and by the time it was 6am we were on the plane getting served breakfast!

I chose the Western breakfast since the Japanese one is mostly cold food, and I'm not a fan. And the Western breakfast is pretty nice; with an omelette, sausage and mashed potato!

And by 8:30am or so we arrived in Hiroshima!

The airport itself is pretty small, and it was a short walk to the station from the immigration counter! It went pretty smoothly and by 10:30am we were on our way to our accommodations!

I'm not sure if this was our station or the airport station tbh.

But we soon arrived onto the streets of Hiroshima!

We took a walk around the neighbourhood and saw these beautiful flowers in full bloom in these troughs on the sidewalk!

I don't think we have anything like this in Singapore; we do have flowers but they're either on bridges or just wild ones in the grass patches along the pavement, but nothing like these pretty flowers!

The sun was pretty bright and warm since it was obviously Springtime.

But it was good since we didn't have to worry about packing winter clothing at least. And sun always makes for better photos!

There was a shotengai near our place:

And a pretty huge Donki Hote too!

But before that, we had to check into our hotel! We decided on a hotel this time since the Airbnbs here weren't very convenient and was about the same price as a hotel so we decided to spend just a little more for the convenience. We stayed at Chisun Hotel, which was pretty small and explains their name since chiisai means small in English.

Source: areabiz.jp

And the good thing was there was a FamilyMart right downstairs! So if we ever needed any snacks we could just pop down to get them!

This was our room, which was pretty small and compact. Probably one of the smaller rooms we've stayed in tbh.

But since we just wanted a place to sleep, shower and dump our luggage, we didn't really need a big place.

This was the toilet; simple and minimalist like all Japanese toilets of course.

Since it was still bright out we didn't want to waste any time in our hotel room and quickly went back our to explore while it was still daytime. And of course the first place we went to is Don Quihote! I'm not sure why they spelled it differently here though.

There was a lot of maple stuff which I guess is Hiroshima's specialty.

Curiously, they also had a huge statue of Mario in a pipe! And just when we were wearing our gaming shirts too! What a happy coincidence! He did have a mole on his nose which was funny since Sean also has a mole on his nose in the exact same spot. XD

After that we went for lunch at one of our favourite and "fast food" chains - Sukiya! Of course I don't mean fast food like McDonalds, but Japan has chains of gyudon/rice bowl shops that is cheap, affordable and quick just like fast food!

I ordered my standard cheese gyudon:

And Sean decided to try the beef noodles with beancurd:

I thought the noodles were really smooth and soft but the taste was just a little bland for me.

So I was really happy with my cheese gyudon, and since the airplane breakfast wasn't very filling, it really hit the spot!

After that filling lunch, we wound up in a video game store, on theme with our shirts again!

The game store was actually pretty big and there was a whole section of old cartridges from the Gameboy era! Man this would be a haven for game collectors for sure!

There was even a Super Famicom on display with Mario Kart Double Dash in it so we tried playing for the first time and it was pretty difficult with us working together on a cart! I've never played Double Dash before so it was pretty cool though!

Excuse my hair but we had fun trying Gamecube controllers for the first time too!

After that we took a walk down that shotengai we saw earlier!

I don't really buy anything in these shotengai but it's always nice to take a stroll down. And you might come across some interesting shops like this  manga one called Jump Shop!

We also checked out the pet shop we saw earlier and saw a bunch of sleepy lil puppers!

They looked so peaceful and cute!

It was nice to take a stroll and dodge a little bit of the spring sunshine since it was pretty warm in the sun.

But after that we were ready to head out and the nearby park was brimming with sakura blossoms!

But more of that next week since this post is getting kinda long. Sorry for the cliffhanger but tune in next week for our first time seeing sakura blossom!

Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!

TacoCat’s Travels #145 (Kuala Lumpur): A Fullfilling Meal with Fam before Flying Off! 😋

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