What to Do in Hiroshima in 3 Days: Peace Park, Miyajima, and the Oysters You'll Dream About

You will probably go quiet here, and that is the point. The Atomic Bomb Dome is left exactly as it stood on the morning of August 6, 1945, the one structure near the hypocenter that did not fully collapse. Now it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the Motoyasu River glides beside it without a sound.

Come early, before the tour groups. The light off the water hits the hollow dome and you get the photograph everyone takes, but in person it feels different, smaller and heavier at once.

Walk the riverbank path south and the whole of Peace Memorial Park opens up in front of you. You have the rest of the morning to give it.

The green lawns of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park sit between two rivers, and you move through it like a slow exhale. The Children's Peace Monument is the one that gets people: a statue of a girl holding a crane, surrounded by cases of thousands more, folded and sent here every year.

Walk the central axis and you line up the Cenotaph, the Flame of Peace, and the Dome in one view, exactly as the designers intended. Ring the Peace Bell if you like. Nobody will stop you.

Give yourself a couple of hours. The museum is here too, but save that for day three when you have the emotional room for it.

Hiroshima does okonomiyaki its own way, and after the weight of the park you will be glad for somewhere loud and warm. Instead of mixing everything into one pancake, they layer it: a thin crepe, then a heap of cabbage, pork, a nest of fried noodles, and an egg, all pressed down and griddled until the bottom goes golden.

Head to Nagarekawa, the nightlife quarter, where counters wrap around the teppan grill and the cook builds yours an arm's length away. You eat it straight off the hot plate with a little metal spatula.

One costs roughly 900 to 1,300 yen (about 6 to 9 USD), and a cold Hiroshima-brewed beer is the right move alongside it.

Day two is island day. From central Hiroshima you ride a tram or the JR line out to Miyajimaguchi, then step onto the ferry for the short crossing to Miyajima. If you are holding a Japan Rail Pass, the JR ferry is covered, so flash it at the gate.

The crossing takes about ten minutes, and the JR boat swings closer to the famous torii on its way in when the tide is right. Stand on the open deck for this. The island, Mount Misen rising green behind the shoreline shrines, is right there.

Deer will greet you on the far pier. They are tame, curious, and will happily investigate your ferry ticket, so hold onto your map.

Itsukushima Shrine was built so that at high tide the whole complex, and its torii gate out in the bay, appear to float. It has stood in some form since the 1100s, and it is the reason most people come to Miyajima at all.

Time it with the tide if you can. High water gives you the floating illusion and the mirror reflections; low water lets you walk right out across the flats to the base of the gate and stand under it. Both are worth the photo, just different ones.

Entry to the shrine is around 300 yen (about 2 USD). Check the posted tide table at the ferry terminal so you know which version of the island you are getting.

Miyajima and the waters around it produce a huge share of Japan's oysters, and the restaurants along the main street grill them fresh right out front. You will smell the charcoal before you decide where to stop.

Get them two ways: grilled in the shell with a little lemon, and fried into crisp golden kaki-fry. A plate of a few grilled oysters runs roughly 600 to 1,000 yen (about 4 to 7 USD). Pair it with momiji manju, the maple-leaf-shaped cakes they bake all over the island, for dessert.

Eat slowly. You have earned a long lunch before the climb up the mountain.

The Mount Misen Ropeway carries you most of the way up the island's sacred peak, over forest that has been left wild for centuries. From the upper station the view across the Seto Inland Sea is the kind you stop talking for.

If you have the legs, hike the final stretch to the summit, about half an hour of stone steps and boulders, and you get a 360-degree panorama with rock formations the pilgrims have revered for over a thousand years. The round-trip ropeway is roughly 2,000 yen (about 13 USD).

Keep an eye on the last descent time posted at the station so the mountain does not keep you overnight.

On the walk back down toward the ferry, duck into Daisho-in, a mountainside Buddhist temple that most day-trippers rush past. The stairway up is fitted with rows of metal prayer wheels inscribed with sutras, and you run your hand along them as you go, each spin counting as a reading.

Up top you find caves lit by lanterns, rows of small stone statues wearing knitted red caps, and views back out over the shrine and the bay. It is quiet, shaded, and completely free to enter.

This is the last stop before the ferry back. A good place to let the island settle before you return to the city for the evening.

Day three is lighter on purpose. Hondori is a long covered shopping arcade in the center of town, rain-proof and packed with everything from cheap ramen to fashion to local sweet shops. It is where Hiroshima goes about its ordinary day, and after Miyajima that ordinariness feels nice.

Graze your way down it. Pick up momiji manju to take home, try the melon pan, browse the hundred-yen shops. Trams rattle past the arcade's open ends if you want to range further.

It is a five-minute walk back to Peace Memorial Park from here, which is how you close the loop.

Leave the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum for the end of your trip, because you will carry it with you afterward. The renewed main exhibits walk you through the day of the bombing and its aftermath through personal objects: clothing, photographs, letters, the belongings of people who did not come home.

It is sobering and it is meant to be. Entry is only 200 yen (about 1.50 USD), and the museum's own clear framing is that it exists to work toward a world without nuclear weapons. Give yourself at least ninety minutes and do not rush the final rooms.

When you step back out into the park, the Dome is right there across the water, and you will understand it a little differently than you did on day one.