Japan: Day 4 (Miyajima)

Day 4 was a very wet (therefore “interesting”) day…

We took the ferry from our hotel (in Hiroshima) to Miyajima Island. We chose a VERY rainy day. Since that was our last day in Hiroshima, we decided to make the venture anyway. Miyajima has a famous torii gate, which at high tide seems to float on top of the water.

***

Mini deer roam the streets of Miyajima. There are signs that state something like, “Make sure deer don’t steal passports from pockets”. The deer are fairly friendly – I remember seeing many tourists petting them.

***

We can say that we’ve seen the World’s Largest Rice Scooper. Got rice?

***

We walked the streets of Miyajima and bought food from the little shops. Remember, it was raining most of the time!

We ate a restaurant that specialized in okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is a Japanese “pancake” – ours had shrimp, cabbage, bacon, bean sprouts, eggs and noodles. They cooked it right in front of us. It was very, very tasty!
***

After lunch, we decided to climb Misen Mountain. We hiked up for about 45 mins (pretty wet by the way) and then ran into three Japanese men on the mountain. We asked them how long it would take to walk to the top and it was difficult to understand due the language barrier. We think we were only 1/4 - 1/3 of the way up the mountain. We turned around and started back down...and then it POURED on us. We were mostly giggly because we were soaking wet...it was fun. :)

That night, Julie and Rob went to bed at 5PM...it was an impressive feat.