40 min
Kure
Close enough to read the hull numbers
Thirty minutes on the water inside a working naval port, passing submarines tied up along the pier.
See the detailsThings to do near Hiroshima · within 1 hour of the station
Day one is the Peace Park and Miyajima. Day two is submarines, sake towns and oyster islands.
Ten experiences within an hour of Hiroshima Station — Kure, Saijo, Etajima and beyond — almost none of them written about in English. Pick how much time you have left.
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50 min
Saijo
A brewery that doesn't open to the public
A small tour, by reservation only, through the rooms where the sake is actually made. Then they pour.
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50 min
Etajima
Learn to open one from the women who do it all day
A working oyster processor on Etajima, where buying a bag gets you a knife and a lesson. You can also watch the shuckers work, which is the part nobody forgets.
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1 h 00 min
Kure
Inside a submarine that was still at sea in this century
The Akishio was lifted out of the water and set down beside the road. You walk through the control room and put your eye to the periscope.
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1 h 30 min
Hiroshima City
Make your own okonomiyaki before your train leaves
Inside Hiroshima Station there is a teppan studio run by Otafuku, the company that makes the sauce every okonomiyaki in this city is finished with. You put on an apron, stand at a full-size steel griddle, and build the real thing layer by layer — batter, a mountain of cabbage, noodles, egg — with staff talking you through every flip. Ninety minutes later you eat what you made. You can do this with luggage in a coin locker and a shinkansen to catch.
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1 h 30 min
Kure
The ship this whole city was built to make
A tenth-scale Yamato, twenty-six metres of it, in a room built around the model. The rest of the museum explains why Kure exists at all.
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2 h 00 min
Saijo
Seven breweries, one station, two hours
Saijo is one of Japan's three great sake towns, and its breweries stand within walking distance of the station. A guide takes you through them in English, with a tasting at each stop.
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3 h 00 min
Miyajima
Out with the boats before dawn, then a shrine reached from the water
An oyster family that has worked this stretch of water for three hundred years takes you out for the morning harvest, and then on to Itsukushima Shrine by boat.
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5 h 00 min
Yuki
A logging road, an electric bike, and a hot spring at the bottom
The motor does the climbing. Near the top the forest opens out and the Inland Sea is laid below. The onsen is a short walk from where the ride finishes.
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6 h 00 min
Miyajima
The side of Miyajima the ferries don't go to
A beach on the western shore, reachable only by boat, with a paddleboard and nobody else on it.
See the detailsIf you only add one day, add this one
Kure, from the 9:12 train to the last ferry back
- 09:12 Hiroshima Station to Kure on the Kure Line 40 min
- 10:00 Naval harbour cruise past the submarine pier ¥1,500
- 10:45 Inside the Akishio, then the Yamato Museum across the road ¥1,000
- 13:00 Navy curry on the waterfront, the way the fleet still eats it ¥1,200
- 14:30 Ferry across to Etajima and the old naval academy ¥7,000
- 18:40 Back into Hiroshima in time for dinner 40 min
One train line, one harbour, and the whole history the Peace Park is the end of. Roughly ¥10,700 per person including transport.