Hiroshima Sightseeing Loop Bus: Route, Stops and Times

What the Hiroshima sightseeing loop bus is

Chugoku JR Bus runs this city service as the Meiple-loop, a name you will also see transcribed as Meipuru-pu on signs and leaflets. It works like any hop on hop off bus: one circuit, fixed stops in a fixed order, get off where you like and rejoin on a later departure. Every trip begins and ends at the Shinkansen exit of Hiroshima Station, the side you walk out of when you arrive by bullet train.

Each departure serves Hiroshima Castle, the Atomic Bomb Dome and Peace Memorial Park, which is the whole point of it. Trams reach the park directly, but the garden and art museum corner north of the centre involves a change at Hatchobori onto the Hakushima Line, and the loop bus takes that change out of your day.

The loop bus route and its stops in order

Stops come in one direction only, so the order is what you plan around: Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum, Hiroshima Castle, Hiroshima Museum of Art, Genbaku Dome-mae, Heiwa Koen-mae, then Namiki-dori Iriguchi before the bus heads back to the station. The art museum and the castle fall early in the circuit and the two park stops late, so a 9:00 departure puts you in the castle quarter first and at the Dome later in the morning.

Until 18 July 2026 there were three colour-coded routes, and working out which colour reached which sight ate into people's mornings. Those were folded into the single route above. Hotel handouts and older maps still print the colours, so go by the stop names and the order instead.

The first stop does two jobs. Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum stands directly beside Shukkeien, and the museum's own access information lists the loop bus as one of the ways in, alongside the tram to Shukkeien-mae.

Frequency, operating days and planning your stops

Buses run every day of the week between 9:00 and 18:00, 42 trips in all, spaced 10 to 15 minutes apart. At that frequency a stop costs you the visit plus a short wait at the kerb, which makes four or five stops a realistic day with no timetable in your hand. The operator gives the service window rather than a first and last departure, so check the times posted at the station stop on the day.

The 9:00 start is what catches people out. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum opens at 7:30am, so the quietest stretch inside the building is over before the first bus pulls away from the station, and entry to the permanent exhibition during the early-morning and late-evening extension windows needs an online reservation in any case. If that early hour matters to you, take the tram for that leg and pick up the loop afterwards at Genbaku Dome-mae.

Plan the afternoon backwards from whichever sight closes first. Board for the castle stop by mid-afternoon: from April to September the Ninomaru buildings take their last visitors at 17:00 and shut at 17:30, and from October to March those times move to 16:00 and 16:30. Hiroshima Museum of Art wants you inside by 16:30 and closes Mondays unless a special exhibition is on. Shukkeien, at the first stop on the circuit, lets you through the gate until 17:30 in the 16 March to 15 September season and until 16:30 from 16 September to 15 March, closing half an hour after each.

Once the loop bus has finished for the day, the castle quarter is still worth the walk: the keep exterior and the Ninomaru are lit from sunset until 22:00. Trams carry on well past that, with the last route 2 departure from the Hiroshima Station stop at 23:09.

Bus or tram for the park, the castle and the garden

Take the loop bus on the day the castle quarter is in your plan, and the tram when you want the park early in the morning or late in the evening. The two systems cover different hours and different ground, and there is nothing odd about using both in one day.

• Peace Memorial Park: the loop route gives you Genbaku Dome-mae and Heiwa Koen-mae. By tram it is about 25 minutes from JR Hiroshima Station to Genbaku Dome-mae plus roughly a 10-minute walk, or about 20 minutes on streetcar line 1 or bus 24 to Hon-dori and then five minutes on foot through the arcades.
• Hiroshima Castle and Hiroshima Museum of Art: consecutive stops on the loop, both in the Motomachi and Central Park area north of the centre.
• Shukkeien and the Prefectural Art Museum: the loop reaches them at its first stop. The tram alternative asks more of you: platform 1, 2 or 6 at Hiroshima Station's south exit A, a change at Hatchobori onto the Hakushima Line, then off at Shukkeien-mae, which puts you at the entrance.
• Operating hours: the tram day is much longer, from 5:56 on route 5 to 23:09 on route 2 from the Hiroshima Station stop, against the bus window of 9:00 to 18:00.
• Paying: the tram leg works differently from the bus. Hiroden sells nothing on board and settles the fare as you step off, with an IC card touched twice, once boarding and once alighting. Nine IC cards are accepted, including ICOCA and Suica, and the loop bus takes the major cards as well.
• Beyond the loop: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Hijiyama Park is not on the route. Tram route 5 as far as Hijiyama-shita leaves about 500 m of climbing on foot; from the station the whole walk runs roughly 25 minutes, a taxi about 10.

Passes and what the driver needs to see

Japan Rail Pass and JR-WEST Rail Pass holders ride the loop bus by showing the pass to the driver, according to Chugoku JR Bus, with the JR-WEST pass valid only for journeys usable within Hiroshima Prefecture. Pass conditions do get revised, so hold the pass up as you board and let the driver confirm it rather than assuming. Chugoku JR Bus also offers a one-day pass for the loop itself.

Check what a pass actually names before you lean on it elsewhere in the day. Hiroden states that its 1 Day Streetcar & Ferry Pass covers its streetcars and the Miyajima-guchi to Miyajima boat run by Matsudai Kisen, and that it does not cover the JR Miyajima Ferry or JR West trains. The loop bus belongs to neither the tram company nor the ferry company.

A guided coach day over the same sights

The loop bus leaves the interpretation to you: you choose the stops, read the labels and keep an eye on the clock. A guided coach day puts commentary and a fixed schedule around the same sights, and it goes further than the loop route, which stays inside the city and nowhere near Miyajima.

Peaceful Hiroshima & Miyajima UNESCO 1 Day Bus Tour gathers a short walk from where the loop bus pulls out, at the Shinkansen ticket gate on 2F at Hiroshima Station, North Gate, for a 10:00am start. Inside those 8 hours sit an English-speaking local guide, bus audio guidance in EN, FR, ES, IT, DE, PT and UA, an air-conditioned vehicle, the round-trip ferry, admission to the Peace Memorial Museum, Miyajima Island and Itsukushima Shrine, and lunch if you select it. Prices start from 19,488 yen, with a rating of 5.0 ★ (9,528 reviews).

Hiroshima and Miyajima Full Day Bus Tour from Hiroshima gathers in the Hotel Granvia Hiroshima 1F lobby, on the same north, Shinkansen Plaza side of the station, and runs 8 hours 20 minutes with a national government licensed English guide interpreter, the Miyajima visitor tax and other admissions and transport included. Lunch is not included. Pricing starts from 25,000 yen, and the rating stands at 4.6 ★ (520 reviews).

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