Hiroshima Days - Be a local

When we ask foreigners living in Hiroshima what is the best place to visit in Hiroshima, we often get the answer, "Mitaki-dera Temple. This place is truly a hidden gem. Even though it is located very close to the center of Hiroshima City, it is away from the hustle and bustle of the city. The temple facilities are scattered along the mountain, and people can stroll around and enjoy the changing seasons of the mountain. Summer Autumn What is your favorite part of the Japanese mountains? "The abundance of greenery", "the chirping of birds", "the sound of running water", "the cool breeze and mist". All of these are here. By the way, "Mitaki-dera Temple" is written in Chinese characters as a temple with three waterfalls. As you climb up from the entrance, you can see Koma-ga-Taki (Waterfall) Bon'on-no-Taki (Waterfall) Yumyo-no-Taki  (Waterfall) Enjoy strolling around while listening to the cool sound o...

Wouldn't you like to enjoy this kind of scenery on a nice day? At the top of Mt. Mitaki, you can enjoy the scenery of the city of Hiroshima spread out over the delta created by the rivers, with many islands floating in the sea. If you continue past the Yumyo-no-Taki waterfall at Mitaki-dera Temple , you will enter the course A for climbing Mt. Mitaki. It was a nature-rich walking course, and we saw snakes and frogs as soon as we started walking. Mt. Mitaki, 356 meters above sea level, is an easy mountain for beginners to try, as we had already climbed up the approach to Mitaki-dera Temple. Along the way, you can enjoy a variety of natural features such as bamboo groves and rocks. The top of the mountain has the most stunning view. The day we climbed was a beautiful day, so we could see the Shikoku region across the sea. At the top of the mountain, there is a pine tree with the name "Soko Matsu(pine tree)". Soko is the name of Ueda Shigeyasu, who was also a retainer of the...

If you have visited Hiroshima as a tourist, what do you think the unique features that Hiroshima has to offer? One of the answers should be " Red are seen a lot." That "Red" comes from the team color of the local professional baseball team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. The team is so loved by the locals that many people who come to Hiroshima for work from other parts of Japan express that the people in Hiroshima spend a large percentage of their lives with the Carp. In fact, the day after a game, the next words come after "Good morning" is often "The Carp played well last night, didn't they?". Why is the team so loved? The Hiroshima Carp was established as a municipal baseball team without a parent company in 1949, only four years after the A-bomb was dropped in 1945.  *It became the Hiroshima Toyo Carp in 1967. As the newly e...

As you can see on the Google maps, the center of the Hiroshima city is on the river delta. Back in 1589, Mori Terumoto, the grandson and successor of the warlord Mori Motonari started to build the Hiroshima Castle in the largest delta of those made up of 7 (currently, the reconstruction of the river made it 6) rivers. In order to defend the castle from the enemy, a ditch called "hori -moat-" is usually built, and Hiroshima Castle was built by using rivers as its moat. The only moat that remains today is the inner-most moat, but if you walk around the city carefully, you can see stone pillars standing next to the moat on the sites of a building called a "yagura -tower-" that was built for the purpose of security. As time passed, land reclamation progressed and the delta became a bustling city with people. There are still some places where you can see the remnants of this history.

Okonomiyaki , which the tourists who visit Hiroshima cannot leave without eating, is actually a food that is deeply related to the reconstruction after World War II. - Relationship with the U.S. - Easily cooked atop a hot teppan plate - The shops naming "(some name)-chan” - Summary Relationship with the U.S. There had been a serious food shortage during the war in Japan. And after the war, food supplies were provided by the U.S. government as a part of the food relief program. In the aid, lots of flour were included, especially. Therefore, people started to cook flour with water to bake thin batter, with which cabbages and bean sprouts that were cheap and easily available were eaten together. We can tell that it took a while for okonomiyaki to reach to the current style, called “Niku-tama-soba”. (niku: pork, tama: egg, soba: Chinese noodle, all contained) Easily cooked atop a hot teppan plate! At the time in Hiroshima, there were man...