From Kyoto we travelled on to Hiroshima, discovering that Japanese sandwiches are actually very good and even offer Vegetarian versions.

We stayed in another great ryokan, less antique for obvious reasons, but yet with a distinct traditional Japanese feel.

In the center of Hiroshima lies the Peace Memorial Park and Museum; a gripping reminder of how an entire city turned from this...

...to this in a few horrible minutes on August 6, 1945.

Near the museum remains the building now known as the Atomic Bomb Dome.

It is now the only building left from the old days of Hiroshima and was kept, apart from a few static reinforcements, exactly as it was after the explosion.

The nearby island of Miyajima offers some relief from the weight of historic responsibility and from the hustle of vibrant modern-day Hiroshima.

It's an island idyl where free-living deer welcome you enthusiastically as soon as you step out of the ferry.

Especially if you happen to have a package of crackers in your bag.

Apart from herds of hungry deer, Miyajima offers a number of monuments; temples, shrines and the famous "floating" gate...

...and mysterious cakes, filled with what seems like chocolate cream, prepared by machines right before our eyes... Unfortunately, the filling is actually a red bean paste.

And so the cakes inspire a moment of calm reflection: how on Earth could I eat this?

By ropeway you can get near the top of the mountains, requiring only a 30-minute walk for the rest of the way...

...as long as there aren't any accidents along the way.

Up at the top, we thought we were finally safe from the deer and got out our crackers... Oh well. We tried.

Just by the way, the Japanese are just crazy about power cables. Here's a typical street on Miyajima.

And just before we leave, one last view of the gate... Ahhhh... Don't you just feel zen merely looking at it?

But our time in the West of Japan is nearly over, so we take the tramway to Hiroshima station...

...and there we board the Shinkansen bullet train. Which looks roughly like a duck in the front, but is actually much faster than any duck we've known.

The train personnel is slightly more polite than in Europe, and they actually bowed whenever they entered and left each carriage.

We got off at Tokyo where we spent a night in this charming little old ryokan before moving on to our next destination...