Hiroshima

Hiroshima was next on the agenda.

To mark the combined anniversaries of the Shinkansen
and Evangelion, JR have painted and upholstered a Nozomi
to be EVA 500 themed.

 Emma spent the day going to all the atomic bomb related stuff. I've seen it before, and while it is interesting, it's also super depressing, so I went shopping instead.

A mario kart arcade cabinet

A 3-D glasses based rail shooter, that has a heartbeat monitor built
into the gun, so it knows when You haven't had enough jump scares yet! 

The pets department of the local department store, complete
with actual animals.

 There were a few autumn/halloween events on for the two days we were there. We decided to check out one at a local shrine. It felt a lot like a primary school fete, or some other low key community festival.

A lot of food stalls, and some with carnival style games.

There was a stage, complete with crappy MC

The shrine had some braziers lit.

This guy is some sort of traditional idiot fisherman character. 

He did a terrible dance, fished for stuff in the audience
(the MC attached old shoes and coke cans to his line) and threw
candy and mochi to the children.

Eventually he managed to catch a fish and the whole terrible ordeal was finally over.

The next day we hit up another garden before heading to the Hiroshima International Food Festival for lunch.

Shukkeien garden

more bridges

Shikkeien is built around a lake

The little islands in the middle were inhabited by turtles

Worst water pool evar

The bridge in the middle had Koi hanging around on both sides

you could buy little bags of carp food

not only are they a health risk, also
we just can't fucking stand them.

I bought a bag of food, and used it to lure most of the carp from
one side of the bridge to join the lot on the other.

then I fed an entire second bag to them in one go.

I fear I may have started something.

This garden has a lot of narrow bridges you can cross 

with no railings

I don't know that there is a causal link, but there is
a definite correlation between how good a Japanese garden is
and how little they care if you fall off a bridge and die.

There was some sort of flower show on

including this evil Japanese flower lady 

and tinsel peacock.

The food festival was held at the grounds outside Hiroshima castle

There is, of course, a shrine.

Entertainment was provided by Denisu Waruteru

and a dancing cow

who spent way too much time pimping his DVD for my liking

Subaru had a game where kids got to draw a car on an iPad, and then race them. 

Your car sucks. No wonder you hit a rock.

The castle.

An outer gate.

 That evening we went to a Zombie event.

Some of the decorations were a bit crap.

Others were not too bad.

There were probably more people dressed up as special forces types than zombies

And a chipmunk gave a vampire a prize, for reasons...

A few people were wearing more halloween costumes than zombie

overall it was kind of lame.

Zombies!