this morning it finally worked - i got rid of my old broken suitcase. and it was as i was told. trashing old luggage is part of the hotel service here in japan. so remember, next time you plan to swap your luggage, do it first, give it to the reception, and check out afterwards - lesson learned. happily to have solved this problem, we started our tour for today. we hopped on a hiroshima cable-car[001-002] line number 2, and drove to the peace memorial park[003-073]. first stop for us there was the a-bomb (genbaku) dome[003-023], one of only a few buildings that survived the atomic bomb blast back on the 6th of august in 1945. it survived because the force of the blast came from directly above, thus leaving all the vertical structure intact. next stop was the children's peace monument[032-038], a monument for all the children that died at or after the blast. there were showcases with uncountable folded cranes[038] representing prayers for the victims, and the story of sadako sasaki. sadako was a girl of two years when the bomb was dropped and while fighting her sickness she started to fold cranes (it is said that one is granted a wish once a thousand cranes were folded), but she ran out of paper, so she could not finish the 1000 cranes. after her death, a friend folded the missing ones to complete her goal. there is also a bell right in the monument, and people rang it. by now our mood was already pretty down with all this unbelievable things that happened here within the blink of an eye. eighty thousand people simply just wiped away. near the children's memorial is the peace flame[041], in the middle of the hiroshima peace pond. the flame was lit in the 60s and will remain lit until all nuclear bombs are destroyed. sadly, i think it never will be extinguished. another memorial is the cenotaph[041-046,068-069]. it was built in 1952 and was one of the first memorial monuments to remember the victims of the atomic bomb in hiroshima. the concrete arch-shaped building represents a shelter for the souls of the victims. under the arch is a coffin-shaped chest holding the names of 220000 people that died of the initial blast or exposure to radiation. at the end of memorial park is the peace memorial museum[047-067]. and while the modus in the museum is again typical japanese style[051-052,054] (tons of people, queuing, and walking through the exhibitions like being on conveyor belts), the concept and design of the exhibition itself was amazing. it covered every aspect of the bombing, gave a historical background of the era, from the first settlers up to today's city plans. it explained the american side, the japanese side during the war, why hiroshima and nagasaki were chosen as targets, it gave technical insight of an atomic bomb, it showed the impact on life, and also gave an insight of the aftermath. it revealed that the american government hid all the studies on nuclear exposure and the consequences for the human body. only recently those documents have been made publicly available. and it showed every day items that survived the blast, like a tricycle[060], all kind of melted items[062-067], but also things like the shadow of a person[061] sitting on stone stairs and simply just being evaporated. and by now we already were really really really depressed. time to get out of all these reminders of human madness. so, to get a little contrast, we had hotto cohi, green tea, fresh orange juice from all the oranges[074] in front of the cafe, and famous hiroshima oysters for nina. then we took a stroll down the hondori shopping arcade[075-077,102-106], and soon nina needed a toilet, so we went into the taito game station - and that's where it all began... on the fifth floor of this gaming and pachinko paradise[077-101,104] nina found the cosplay section with all those photo booths. for only a 100 yen (that's not even one euro) one (as in girls) can rent a costume, wear it, take it to the photo booth and take pictures of themselves. while on the pictures outside they also had cool costumes for boys (mostly uniforms or uniform-alike costumes of some manga stars unknown to me), inside they had none. too bad, too sad. so ninsti got all the fun, and turned out to be a real cosplay addict[078-080,084-087]. taking the pictures we did together[081,088], and had loads of fun, and loads of troubles getting them printed out. so each time we had to call for the guy handing out the costumes to press the right buttons for printing the pictures (instead of sending them to the mobile phone, which seems to be the preferred way here in japan). also during "post-production" we pressed all kind of buttons we had no idea what they would do. so double the fun. also those photo booths make your eyes bigger, add an overdone soft-focus lens effect and clean your skin. i almost had no beard anymore, and had eyes like puss in boots in shrek (if you remember the scene i refer to). then we did some zombie shooting in "dark escape 4D"[089-097] (yes, 4D). with 3D glasses in a dark box and air-blasts this game was fun. extra fun were the "panic attack" detection systems, that showed your heart-rate. while nina's heart rate was beyond healthy, mine was low as always - guess that's the pro gamer in me. hehe. time to grab some food. nina had read something about a nice place to eat, called okonomi-mura village[133] in hiroshima parco. so we entered this four floor food place to enjoy the hiroshima style okonomi-yaki[107-132], which was super yummi! and since "okonomi" literally means "to one's liking", i had mine with "tamago, ie" ("egg, no"), and crossing my two forefingers while ordering - and it worked! once you decided on which okonomi-yaki you want, it is prepared right in front of you. dad, son, and mom[119] (or at least we thought it was a family run business) were all working to get our meal done. nomnom. repleted and tired we made our way home to our hotel. since it was not far from our current position, we decided to walk home instead of taking the cable-car. and while walking we saw those huge huge zebra-crossing[134-136], streets full of life and lights[137], and cute drain covers[138].