Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum: your plan for the doors and the rooms

This is the one stop in Hiroshima where the story is told in sequence, with objects, photographs and survivors' testimony instead of monuments standing in the open air. The permanent exhibition is arranged in six areas: an introductory exhibit, Hiroshima on August 6, Victims and Survivors, a gallery on the building of the park, the dangers of nuclear weapons, and Hiroshima history.⁶ Go in expecting it to be heavy, and do not book a cheerful, hurried lunch for the minutes right after.

Two buildings share the work. The first floor of the East Building holds the practical side and is free to enter: information, the museum shop, the ticket counter, audio guide rental, a video theater and the visitor's lounge.⁷ The permanent exhibition begins upstairs, where the third floor of the East Building carries Hiroshima before the bombing, A Lost Way of Life, the dangers of nuclear weapons and a corner of survivor video testimony.⁸ The remaining areas of the index follow the same thread of story.

How much time to give it is your call. The Viator bus day lists the museum as a 60-minute stop between the park and the ferry crossing. The audio guide alone runs about 70 minutes if you listen to everything, though you can skip or repeat explanations as you like.⁹ Put the two side by side and you can decide whether to follow the whole audio route or choose the rooms that matter most to you.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum tickets are sold at the counter in yen. Adults (college students and up) pay 200 yen, high school students pay 100 yen, and junior high school students and younger enter free.³ Groups of 30 or more adults pay 160 yen each.³ Visitors aged 65 and over pay 100 yen if they show their passport.¹⁵ The prices are the museum's own, posted on its page, and they are separate from whatever a tour listing charges.

The ticket counter and the audio guide rental sit on the same floor, the first floor of the East Building.⁷ Renting an audio guide costs 500 yen per unit, or 450 yen each when a group rents 30 or more.¹⁶ The guide comes in 15 languages, among them Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and Ukrainian.²¹ Group reservations for the audio guide are taken by phone only, and the call is handled in Japanese only.²²

It helps to separate the two money questions. The Viator coach day is from $126 for the whole eight hours. Its inclusions list admission to the Peace Memorial Museum, so the 200 yen entry is covered on that day; keep some yen for the audio guide and a locker coin if you want them.^3,16,11

The museum's own access page gives clear options from Hiroshima Station. The No. 24 Hiroshima Bus leaves from the south exit and takes about 20 minutes to the Heiwa kinen koen stop.²⁹ A streetcar toward Fukuro-machi or Genbaku Domu Mae takes about 25 minutes.³⁰ The sightseeing loop bus takes about 17 minutes.³¹

If you arrive at the bus center instead, the page puts the museum at about a 10-minute walk.³² The streetcar page names two stops, Fukuro-machi and Genbaku Domu Mae, depending on the line you ride, so check the line number on the front of the car before you board.

On the Viator bus day, none of this needs planning: the group meets at the Shinkansen ticket gate on the second floor of Hiroshima Station and the museum is one of the stops on the route. Traveling independently, build the walk so the museum is neither squeezed at the very end of a tired day nor left for a closing hour you have not reserved.