Miyajima Island

Today we slept in.. and went to an island about half an hour train ride from Hiroshima known as Miyajima Island. Apparently a very popular tourist destination, and there really where a lot of whiteys.

We took a ferry across

The island is most known for the orange thingy in the water.. its a Gate of some sort, and for the local deer that prance around.. and for a temple I really wanted to see, and Mt. Misen which you can climb via ‘ropecar’ The scenery on the island is beautiful.

Here I am with a local, prancing deer.

Here is the orange thingy in the water.

Here is Jesse donating a small amount of money to a Buddha-like statue – this act is highly common, almost all the locals will donate money.. to lots of statues.

Here is the entrance to the main temple – the circle bits in the middle have blessings on them, and tourists are welcome to run their hands along them as they move up the stairs to receive the blessings.

So, we did

We are now blessed.

Whilst within the temple grounds I found these three little.. um.. kids? They are so incredibly cute. The first two seemed playful, and the last one seemed sweepy.

Here are two “smiley tourist shots with nice scenery background.”

We stopped for lunch – to find that I had hideous beanie-hair.. We had those noodle, egg, pork and cheese pancakes again. They are so filling and tasty.

After this we headed to the rope car, or what I would call a cable car, which headed toward the peak of the mountain. Ten bucks, what a rip. Still can’t get over that. I swear the island supports all of its expenses on these rope car admissions.

And, here are the panoramic scenic photographs taken from the top of the mountain!

Then, because I was bitching so much about the price, we did not take the rope car back down; we walked back down. As it was only 1.8km I didn’t see how it could be so bad.. well.. heh.. 1.8km is a long way when there are steep, rocky steps the entire way.

An hour or so later we arrived back at the bottom.. whew, so it was time for ice-cream. We found these highly interesting.. erm.. soft-serve ice-creams.. except instead of a cone or wafer cone, they put them inside “hot fluffy bread” – these were delicious.

By this time the sun was setting, and the tide was out – so we walked out to where the orange gate thingy was and I took photos.

Well – that’s it for Hiroshima, tomorrow morning we are Tokyo bound. It’s about a 4 and a half hour train ride on the bullet train.