First Published – 18 July 2012

The tournament is over and after a couple of big party nights with the rest of the GB ultimate players we’ve headed to Hiroshima.

Took our first bullet train – the  Shinkansen, and it was brilliant. Every one got excited and it was great to use our rail passes. The trains are smooth and very fast.

The 7 strong travel gang consisted of myself, Linz, Ange and Eddie. Who all know each other from Leeds Frisbee days. We were joined by Bridget, Saz and Jen from Bristol. Although these groups knew each other thought playing Frisbee we were all looking  forward to spending time together. The group spent the journey getting to know each other and we were in Hiroshima before we knew it.

A few wrong turns and a Taxi ride later we were in or hotel. The court hotel. Bijou accommodation, but in a good location.

We headed out to the peace memorial for an emotional afternoon. The 50p entrance fee helped ease some of the pain, so reasonable! It’s a lovely place, clean and well designed with some beautiful and touching memorials.

The museum itself if full of gut wrenching images, words and artefacts. It left us all feeling emotionally drained and very reflective. We discussed the politics and progression of WW2 – Bridget and I did our best to remember history lessons but our overall thought was that we needed to do some reading.

I was particularly interested in the letters and correspondence from and relating to Albert Einstein. I know a bit about the history of the science of the A-bomb and knew that Einstein has fled Germany knowing that the Nazis were close to developing nuclear technology. He shared this knowledge with the US authorities and I think that must have been a very hard decision to make. Hard to imagine yourself in that situation.

After a sit down and some emergency snacks, we took the tram to the central station, another form of transport!! The intention was to visit Mijajima island, to the south. After chatting to the information bureau we decided that Mijajima would require a whole day, and postponed the trip until the following day. Instead we went to a restaurant for dinner, and wandered back to the hotel.

Everyone gathered in our room and we discussed Eddie’s reading history. She’s only read three novels. We talked about which books she should read. Quite a long list…..