Hiroshima

Today is my dad's birthday. I'm in Hiroshima. Today we flew in from Tokyo, passing right over the immense cone of Fuji-san. The volcano was coated in thick snow, and was picture perfect. Naturally, my camera was stuffed away in my bag. But what a view!

The flight was quite short, with the train trek to Hanida and the inevitable BS about checking you bags easily taking up as much time as the actual flight. They measured the length of my Manfrotto tripod for some reason. Is there a lenght of tripod that becomes dangerous? "Take this plane to N. Korea, or I'll make you use this pinchy tripod!"

But Hiroshima is a city of a 1 million or so with something unusual for a Japanese city: a large section which is "no smoking". I'm not sure how they managed to convince the locals to give up their butts, but it's part of a plan to improve the city centre—and it works.

We spent the day out at the shrine to the dead on the water on a small island out in the bay, then climbed the mountain (okay, the cable cars did most of the work) and watched the monkeys groom the deer. That is, the deer that weren't mooching on the beach....