Hiroshima

The currency is the yen, which in 2026 runs around ¥150–160 to the dollar. Typical prices: coffee ¥400–600; set lunch ¥900–1,300; okonomiyaki ¥900–1,500; izakaya dinner with a drink ¥3,000–5,000; draft beer or chū-hai ¥500–700; convenience store meal ¥500–800; streetcar ¥240; “business” hotel chain ¥9,000–15,000 a night, hostel ¥3,500–6,000, ryokan in Miyajima from ¥25,000 with dinner. Cards work at chains, hotels, department stores, and most restaurants, but carry cash for small okonomiyaki places, temples, buses, and markets. ATMs at 7-Eleven and post offices take foreign cards. Nobody tips anywhere: change left on the table is usually handed back. The 10% consumption tax is already built into the price shown (8% for food to go), there's an exemption on purchases over ¥5,000 with your passport, and it's worth confirming the procedure in effect, because Japan is moving to a system where the tax is charged in-store and refunded at the airport. Since April 1, 2026, there's a lodging tax of about ¥200 per person per night in Hatsukaichi, the municipality that covers Miyajima, charged at hotel checkout.

Hiroshima Airport: 50 km east, no train

Hiroshima Airport (HIJ) is in Mihara, about 50 km east, and has no rail link: the limousine bus to Hiroshima Station takes about 50 minutes and costs around ¥1,500. Many people arrive by Shinkansen instead, about 4 hours from Tokyo, 1 hour 25 minutes from Shin-Osaka and 1 hour from Hakata (Fukuoka). From the station it's 10 to 15 minutes to downtown by streetcar, and since August 3, 2025 the streetcar pulls right into the second floor of the station building, level with the JR ticket gates, so you no longer have to cross the street with your luggage.

Japan's largest streetcar fleet

Inside the city, the system is the Hiroden streetcar, with eight lines and the largest streetcar fleet in Japan, including cars bought from Osaka, Kyoto, and Hanover, and two vehicles that were in service on August 6, 1945 and still run today. The fare is flat, about ¥240 per ride, paid on exit in coins, with the MOBIRY DAYS system, or by tapping a contactless credit card on the validator. The network is rounded out by the automated Astram metro (opened in 1994, distance-based fare starting at about ¥190), JR trains on the Sanyō, Kure, and Kabe lines, city buses, and the Ujina ferries. Downtown is flat and walkable end to end in 40 minutes, there are shared bikes from the Peacecle system with dozens of stations, and taxis start around ¥700.

Hiroshima is a very low-crime city, where walking alone at night downtown is routine and a lost item usually comes back through the police lost-and-found. The real risks are weather-related: besides the summer heat, typhoons and localized torrential rain arrive from August to September. On the hillsides of the northern valleys, landslides killed 77 people in Asaminami in 2014 and caused deaths across the prefecture in the 2018 floods. If there's a heavy-rain warning, follow municipal instructions and avoid hillside neighborhoods. Scams are rare, aside from the bar approach on the Nagarekawa sidewalk. Bicycle theft is the city's most common crime. A backpack left on a chair doesn't disappear, but an umbrella does, for a reason nobody can explain. In an emergency, 110 is police and 119 is fire and ambulance.

In the Peace Park, walk as in a cemetery

Under the Memorial to the Unidentified lie the ashes of tens of thousands of people, and the entire park is the old Nakajima district. You don't picnic, you don't sit on the cenotaph and you don't pose smiling in front of it.

Pay the streetcar when you exit

On Hiroden's newer streetcars, board through any door and pay when you get off, ¥240 per ride. Have your coins or card ready before you reach the exit, because the line of people getting off won't wait while you dig through your backpack for change.

Eat okonomiyaki straight off the griddle

At the counter, the cook slides the okonomiyaki over to you on the griddle and you eat it with the hera, the metal spatula, without a plate. You can ask for a plate and chopsticks, but at peak times it slows down the griddle and the line.

Don't feed the deer in Miyajima

They're wild animals, feeding them is banned on the island, and they eat paper: maps, tickets, shopping bags. Keep everything in your pocket or zipped inside your backpack.

Ask permission before photographing testimonies

Hibakusha testimony sessions take place in museum rooms and at schools, and the audience is usually students. Listen without taking photos until the organizer says it's fine, and don't ask speakers about their health or their family.

Take your trash with you

There are almost no trash cans on the street, and the few in the park and at stations are for what you buy there. A folded bag in your pocket takes care of the whole day, including the stick from your fried momiji.

Allow time for the museum and park

Treating Hiroshima as a quick stop between trains leaves little room for the exhibition and memorial. I would set aside a morning for both, including a break; visit times vary. Miyajima deserves another day, including train or tram and ferry travel, rather than becoming an obligation for the same afternoon.

Crossing the park at midday in July or August

Walking from the Peace Park to the Dome in the middle of the day, in July or August. With the humid heat and heat-index warnings of that season, heatstroke is the real risk in this city: walk the park early, right after the museum, carry water and salt, and save the middle of the day for indoor places.

Accepting a bar invitation on the sidewalk in Nagarekawa

Following someone who approaches you on the sidewalk in Nagarekawa with an invitation to a bar. It's the “catch” scam, where the bill comes inflated with seat charges, and the way out is to turn down any invitation made on the street and choose the bar yourself.

Looking for the PASPY card, retired in 2025

Looking for the PASPY card, which old guides still recommend for the streetcar. It was retired in 2025 and replaced by the MOBIRY DAYS system, and the validator also accepts a contactless credit card: confirm the payment method before you board.

Check last admissions and orders

Planning dinner or a visit solely around closing time can go wrong: last orders and admissions often come earlier. Check the restaurant and institution you choose. The Peace Memorial Museum has seasonal hours and reserved slots; do not assume every museum in the city closes at the same time.

こんにちは: Konnichiwa (kon-nitchi-uá)

Hello, used from mid-morning to late afternoon

すみません: Sumimasen (sumi-massên)

Excuse me, sorry, and also “please attend to me”: used to call the waiter

お好み焼き一枚ください: Okonomiyaki ichimai kudasai (oconomiiáki itchimai cudassai)

One okonomiyaki, please

そばで: Soba de (sóba dê)

With soba noodles: the choice between soba and udon they always ask at the counter

いくらですか: Ikura desu ka (ikura dess ka)

How much does it cost?

ぶちうまいじゃけぇ: Buchi umai jakee (butchi umái jaquê)

“It's really tasty” in the local dialect: buchi means “very” and jakee closes the sentence

Kamiya-chō and Hatchōbori

The financial and shopping center, where almost all the streetcar lines cross and the department stores are. It's the city's busiest transfer point and the area with the most chain hotels.

Hondōri

A covered pedestrian arcade about 570 m long, between Kamiya-chō and Fukuromachi, with shops, pharmacies, cafés and the Astram line's terminus. It's handy when it rains and is the natural route between downtown and the Peace Park.

Nagarekawa and Yagenbori

The nightlife quarter of Naka-ku, with hundreds of izakayas, shot bars and live-music venues on narrow streets. It's busy from 7pm to 2am, and it's where uni-hōren, a counter dish of sea urchin on spinach, was invented.

Station surroundings (Minami-ku)

Home to the Shinkansen station, the new shopping complex that opened in 2025 and the row of okonomiyaki counters at Ekimae Hiroba. A good place to stay if you arrive late or leave early by train.

Hijiyama and Danbara

A 71-meter hill with a cherry-blossom park, a contemporary art museum, and the public manga library.

Yokogawa

A secondary hub to the north, around the JR station of the same name, where Japan's first city bus line started in 1905. It's full of small bars, independent cafés and mid-sized music venues.

Ujina and Motoujina

The waterfront to the south, with the passenger terminal where ferries leave for Miyajima, Etajima, Ninoshima and Matsuyama. It's an area of warehouses and a seaside park, plus the hotel that hosted the 2023 G7 summit.

Miyajimaguchi (Hatsukaichi)

A base beside the ferry pier for Miyajima, in Hatsukaichi. JR indicates about 28 minutes by train from Hiroshima, excluding waiting and pier access. It may make leaving for the island easier; weigh that benefit against travel to Hiroshima’s places and check ferries there and back.

The delta, the hills, and the sea

Hiroshima occupies the delta of the Ōta River, which splits into six branches before entering the bay: practically all of downtown sits on alluvium and landfill, which explains the name “wide island” and the number of bridges (more than 2,500 in the city). Downtown is flat and laid out in regular blocks between the channels, ringed by low hills that close off the horizon: Futabayama to the northeast, Hijiyama to the southeast (71 m), Ōgonzan to the west, and in the distance Misen, at 535 m, on Miyajima island. The Seto Inland Sea, sheltered by islands on almost every side, gives the region its Setouchi climate: little rain, many sunny days and muggy, windless summers.

The postwar grid and the hillsides

The current street grid is the result of the postwar reconstruction plan: Peace Boulevard, 100 m wide, cutting through the city east to west, the Peace Memorial Park occupying the point of land between the Motoyasu and Honkawa rivers, and the Hiroden streetcar lines stitching together Aioi-dōri and Rijō-dōri. Recent expansion has climbed up the tributary valleys, in Asaminami and Asakita, hillside terrain that has already produced severe landslides in 2014 and in the 2018 rains.

Baseball and soccer drive Hiroshima

Two institutions organize the city's shared life. The Hiroshima Carp, a baseball team founded in 1950 with donations dropped into barrels on the street, is owned by a local company and has played at Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium since 2009; on game days, red takes over the streetcars and the station. Sanfrecce Hiroshima, the soccer club, won three national titles in the 2010s and since February 2024 has played at the Edion Peace Wing, a new downtown stadium next to the castle. It was the first time in decades that the city had top-division soccer within walking distance of downtown.

The museum, the schools, and the jazz bars

The culture of memory is a serious, everyday industry: the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation keeps the museum and the archive of testimonies, schools from across the country make study trips to the city, and survivors still give testimony in the museum's rooms, though their average age has already passed 85. The Mayors for Peace network was founded here in 1982 and brings together thousands of municipalities. None of that keeps the city from having a scene of jazz bars and live music in Yokogawa and Nagarekawa, a symphony orchestra since 1963, and nighttime performances of kagura, the masked dance theater of the prefecture's north, with dragons and swords.

Books, manga, and film about the atomic bomb

Hiroshima is also the subject of works that explain it better than any pamphlet: the report “Hiroshima,” by John Hersey, published in full in The New Yorker in August 1946; the novel “Black Rain,” by Masuji Ibuse, from 1965, filmed by Shohei Imamura in 1989; the manga “Barefoot Gen,” which Keiji Nakazawa began in 1973 drawing on his own childhood; and the animated film “In This Corner of the World” (2016), about domestic life in Kure and Hiroshima before and after August 1945.

“Hiroshima” by John Hersey (1946)

A report that took up an entire issue of The New Yorker in August 1946, following six survivors hour by hour. It's the text that made the world understand the bomb on a human scale rather than in tonnage.

“Barefoot Gen” by Keiji Nakazawa (1973)

An autobiographical manga by an artist who was 6 years old on August 6, 1945 and lost almost his whole family. It also covers the postwar years, the hunger, the black market and the stigma against survivors.

“In This Corner of the World” by Sunao Katabuchi (2016)

An animated film about a young woman who marries into a family in Kure and runs a household there in 1944 and 1945, with Hiroshima in the background. It recreates the streets, prices and recipes of the period and explains the region better than any documentary.