Hiroshima, JP

A steady, multi-generation okonomiyaki counter a block from Peace Park, cooking the Hiroshima layered style with soba folded in. It is busier with locals than the museum-crowd spots right on the park edge.

The head shop of the lineage credited with inventing the Hiroshima layered okonomiyaki after the war, still on Hatchobori. The build is precise: thin crepe, mountain of cabbage, noodles, egg, all pressed and sauced to order.

A long-running griddle joint near Hiroshima Station where the cabbage is piled high and steamed soft under the crepe before the whole stack is flipped. A reliable first okonomiyaki if you are arriving or leaving by shinkansen.

A four-story building near Nagarekawa packed with two dozen tiny okonomiyaki stalls, each a family counter with its own loyal regulars. The fun is picking one almost at random and watching your dinner built on the communal griddle.

A Yokogawa institution run for decades by a Guatemalan owner who folds his own touches into the Hiroshima okonomiyaki. The room is tiny, smoky, and covered in years of regulars' graffiti, and the cheese-and-pepper version has a cult following.

An oyster specialist on Miyajima's shopping street working the bivalve the region is famous for: grilled in the shell, fried, in rice, on the half shell. A natural lunch between the shrine and the Misen trailhead.

An oyster restaurant set on a moored boat on the Motoyasu River below the Peace Park, raising its own oysters in the Seto Inland Sea. It is the special-occasion version of Hiroshima's oyster obsession, course by course on the water.

A Hiroshima tsukemen specialist serving the local cold-noodle, hot-dipping-broth style with a dial of chili heat from mild to genuinely punishing. A good change of pace when you have hit okonomiyaki saturation.

A long-running North Indian kitchen east of the center that has fed Hiroshima curry regulars for years. Unflashy, generous thalis and properly blistered naan make it the reliable non-okonomiyaki night.

A glass-walled riverside cafe on the Motoyasu bank facing the Atomic Bomb Dome, good for an all-day coffee, breakfast plate, or evening glass with the best seat in the Peace Park area. Terrace tables put the Dome directly across the water.

Miyajima's sacred peak, climbed on stone-stepped forest paths past an eternal flame said to have burned since the ninth century, ending on a boulder summit with Seto Inland Sea views. The classic outing pairs a hike up with the ropeway down.

A wooded temple valley on the city's northwest edge where three waterfalls drop through moss, maples, and a vermilion pagoda. The short loop feels a world away from the flat downtown despite being a couple of train stops out.

A low wooded hill rising straight out of the city, looped by easy paths past the contemporary art museum and some of Hiroshima's best cherry trees. A flat-to-gentle walk with skyline views and almost no tourists.

A temple-and-shrine trail strung along the wooded foot of Futabayama just behind the station, linking half a dozen old halls and a hilltop pagoda. Locals use it as a quiet morning circuit a stone's throw from the shinkansen tracks.

The wide tree-lined avenue cut across the rebuilt city, its central strip planted with rows of donated trees and dotted with sculpture. A flat, accessible stroll that doubles as an open-air lesson in how Hiroshima rebuilt.

The museum at the south end of the park that tells the bombing through belongings, photographs, and survivor testimony, redone in recent years to lead with personal stories. It is harrowing and essential, and worth the unhurried two hours.

The carmaker's on-site museum east of the center, reached by a bus ride through the company's own grounds, covering the rotary engine, the Le Mans-winning 787B, and a live look at the assembly line. A genuine factory tour, not a showroom.

Home of the Hiroshima Carp, whose red-clad fans run one of the loudest, most choreographed home crowds in Japanese baseball. Even with no interest in the sport, a Carp night is the city's best evening crowd experience.

Japan's first public museum dedicated to contemporary art, set atop the wooded Hijiyama hill in a Kisho Kurokawa building. The collection leans into postwar and atomic-age themes, which lands with particular weight in this city.

A compact, walkable collection of French Impressionist and modern European painting near the castle, founded by a local bank. An easy hour of Monet and Van Gogh when you want a break from the city's heavier history.

Miyajima's aquarium focused on Seto Inland Sea life, including the oyster rafts the region farms and a popular finless porpoise. The best rainy-day or kid-wrangling option once you are over on the island.

A modern tower right beside the A-Bomb Dome with an open-air top deck looking over the whole Peace Park and a spiral ramp down its glass side. A paper-crane wall lets you drop your own folded crane into the building's core.

Hiroshima's dense after-dark quarter, a grid of narrow lanes stacked with izakaya, tiny bars, and music spots between Hondori and the river. It is where the city actually goes out, best explored by ducking into whatever looks busy.

The skeletal ruin left standing near the 1945 hypocenter, kept exactly as the blast left it as a UNESCO peace memorial. It reads very differently at dawn and after dark, when the riverbank empties and the lighting turns the bare girders stark.

The wide green park laid over the former commercial district flattened in 1945, threaded with monuments between the two rivers. Walk it slowly from the Dome through the cenotaph to the museum to follow the deliberate sightline the architect built.

The vermilion shrine on Miyajima built on stilts over a tidal flat, so at high water its great offshore torii appears to float. The boardwalks, tide, and deer make it the half-day trip every Hiroshima local sends visitors on.

A faithful postwar reconstruction of the moated 1590s keep, now a compact museum on samurai-era Hiroshima with a top-floor view over the city. The grounds, with their surviving gates and a gnarled bomb-survivor eucalyptus, are the quieter draw.

A 1620s lord's garden built as a miniaturized landscape, all of it circling a central pond crossed by an arched stone bridge. It is small enough to loop in under an hour and rewards a slow lap watching the carp and the tea-house reflections.

The monument to Sadako and the child victims, ringed by glass cases stuffed with thousands of folded paper cranes sent from school groups worldwide. It is small but it is where the park's history lands hardest for families.

The mountain temple on Miyajima that most day-trippers walk straight past, stacked up the lower slope of Mount Misen. Spinning metal sutra cylinders line the main staircase, and a cave of hundreds of lanterns sits below the halls.

An unfinished 1587 hall of a thousand tatami mats, left open on all sides so the breeze runs straight through the vast timber floor. The five-story pagoda beside it is the postcard, but the empty pavilion is the place to sit.