Hondori Shopping Street

Hondori is Hiroshima's principal shopping street and the largest covered arcade in the entire Chugoku and Shikoku region, a broad, roofed pedestrian avenue that runs through the heart of the city. Stretching for well over half a kilometre from the eastern edge of the Peace Memorial Park toward the central Chuo-dori, it is the commercial spine of downtown Hiroshima and a place almost every visitor passes through. Bright, busy and sheltered from the weather, it ties together the city's solemn memorial district and its lively contemporary centre.

The arcade is lined end to end with several hundred shops and restaurants: fashion boutiques and department-store entrances, drugstores and electronics outlets, cafes, bakeries, sweet shops and countless places to eat, from quick counters to sit-down restaurants. It caters to locals and visitors alike, and the mix leans toward everyday shopping rather than souvenirs, giving it an authentic, lived-in feel. Because it is fully covered and flat, Hondori is comfortable in any weather - a real advantage in Hiroshima's hot, humid summers and its occasional rain - and it makes an easy, step-free stroll for everyone.

Hondori's history mirrors the city's own. This was a thriving commercial district before 1945, obliterated in the atomic bombing, and rebuilt in the postwar decades into the flourishing arcade it is today. Its very vitality is part of Hiroshima's story of recovery: a street that was reduced to ashes now hums with shoppers and diners, a few minutes' walk from the monuments that commemorate the catastrophe. That proximity gives a visit here an unexpected poignancy. At the arcade's western end you emerge close to the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Peace Memorial Park, so many visitors combine a sombre morning of remembrance with an afternoon of ordinary life and lunch on Hondori.

The street also serves as a hub for Hiroshima's food culture. Just off it, the famous Okonomimura building stacks floor upon floor of stalls serving Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, the layered savoury pancake with noodles that is the city's signature dish, and the surrounding blocks are thick with restaurants and izakaya. The neighbouring districts of Kamiyacho and Hatchobori, with their big department stores and underground shopping malls, connect seamlessly to Hondori's eastern end, making the whole central area one continuous, walkable shopping and dining zone.

The experience is straightforward and enjoyable: an all-weather stroll through the middle of the city, with endless excuses to stop for food, coffee or shopping. It is at its liveliest in the afternoon and early evening, when locals finish work and the restaurants fill, and it stays busy after dark. There are no monuments along it - the point is the browsing, the eating and the sense of downtown Hiroshima going about its day.

Getting there is easy: Hiroshima's trams stop at Hondori and Kamiyacho, and the Astram Line has a Hondori station right beneath the arcade, while the Peace Park lies within a few minutes' walk of the western end. Use Hondori as the practical, sheltered heart of your time in the city - the place to eat, shop and feel the pulse of a Hiroshima that has rebuilt itself in full.