Last Night in Hiroshima and Back to Tokyo

On our last night in Hiroshima, my mom and I had dinner at Nagataya, one of the city's most famous restaurants. 

We lined up early but still had to wait to be seated for more than an hour... but the meal was absolutely worth the wait.

Nagataya is an okonomiyaki restaurant, and we were seated at a booth by the kitchen where we could watch the chefs preparing dinner for the restaurant's customers. It's like having a show along with your meal!

While we waited for our meal to be prepared, we ordered a set of hitokuchi gyoza, which were crispy pan-fried pork dumplings filled with minced pork and flavored with a hint of lemon, a special signature of the Hiroshima area.

In Hiroshima, okonomiyaki (buckwheat and cabbage pancakes) is served in layers, rather than having all of the ingredients mixed into the batter, and typically incorporate noodles, which is rare in other parts of the country.

We ordered the original okonomiyaki with garlic, which started out as a wheat flour pancake made with pork, shrimp, and squid rested upon a bed of thick and chewy udon noodles, which became crispy on the bottom as they cooked on the griddle. The pancake was topped with a mountain of thinly sliced green onion and the raw yolk of an egg (both Hiroshima signatures). Since we had ordered the house special garlic okonomiyaki, the entire dish was sprinkled with crispy deep-fried garlic chips to add extra crunch and aromatic flavors.

The next morning, we packed our luggage, took a cab to Hiroshima Station, bought breakfast, and boarded our train back to Tokyo. We had traveled far of the past two weeks, all the way down to the southern end of Japan's main island of Honshu, and it was a long trip back to Tokyo. Even by bullet train, it took nearly five hours for us to arrive back in the city.

We were going to be staying at the TOE Library, the same guesthouse where we had begun our journey across Japan two weeks before. We were greeted by Yoshi, the owner, who showed us to our room and asked us all about our trip.

Unfortunately, I had started coming down with a cold a few days before, and by the time we finally got to Tokyo, I was feeling really bad. Luckily, at least, it happened at the end of our journey and I was able to enjoy the rest of the trip without any problems.

For dinner, we ate at a local ramen bar. There's nothing better for a cough than a hot bowl of soup, and my miso ramen was really soothing.

What an incredible two weeks it had been! I'm so grateful to have had this fun adventure with my mother, to have been able to show her around Japan and take her to see some of my favorite places... as well as see a bunch of new places too.

The next morning, after a good night's sleep, it was time for us both to head off to Haneda Airport. Mom's flight was earlier than mine, and after saying our farewells, she boarded her flight back to the US. I checked in at the capsule hotel so that I could have some rest before my evening flight, and a few hours later, I was back on my way to Thailand. It had been an unforgettable journey, but it was time to go back to real life.