We were treated to a feast for breakfast...
And then we returned upstairs to pack ourselves up. Well I did, Tom decided that his time was better spent mucking around in the robes provided by the hotel.
We did both eventually manage to pack ourselves up though, and although there were still things in Miyajima we wanted to see, if we wanted a driver to help us get our bags back to the ferry station, we had to take them up on the offer straight away. So we did! It was quite the experience traveling through the extremely narrow streets in a mini van dodging deer and tourists alike!
We managed to convince the souvenir shop assistant at the ferry terminal to take care of our bags for us while we did some more wandering (for a fee), and we were free and unfettered again! I of course took more photos of the Torii gate, this time at a higher tide than it had been the previous afternoon.
And we decided to get a bit adventurous and explore the waterfront.
Looking towards the Torii gate was this view...
And in the other direction, this view!
We strolled along towards the Torii gate until we reached this very helpful sign... thank goodness it gave us advance warning of the approaching dead end!
Once we had safely circumnavigated the dead end, it wasn't far to the Torii gate, with water lapping at its toes this time.
So pretty.
The Itsukushima Shrine looked very pretty too, with the water lapping at its toes.
It's hard to miss!
And of course, I went a bit nuts with the camera again. Can you blame me?
Ah the symmetry!
Ooh... a fancy angle...
OK, you get the idea. We made our way back down again to see what else we could see. We passed this pretty old building (no idea whether it was anything special, but it had very nice hydrangeas in flower in the front yard)...
And we kept wandering, catching glimpses every now and then of the Torii gate over the town's rooftops.
We admired the deer drinking from the little creek...
And we made our way around the island in a loop, until we were looking at the Torii gate from the other side of the little bay it sits in.
We passed the local aquarium, but decided that patting the dolphin statue outside would satisfy us without having to pay to actually go inside...
We kept exploring, still catching little glimpses of the Torii gate over rooftops as we went...
And Tom admired this extremely odd-looking kayak contraption. It was literally only about 1.5m long. Designed for Japanese-size legs I guess!
And then we just couldn't resist treating ourselves to a little snack of grilled oysters, like the ones we'd had for lunch the previous day. And this time we got to actually watch them being cooked from a little stall on the side of the street.
They were very good.
Although we came very close to losing them! This guy appeared out of nowhere, and I jumped so high when he nudged my elbow that I almost lost my oyster.
What do you think? Oyster ears suit Donald Duck better?
The time was fast approaching when we needed to be back on a ferry so that we could get to Hiroshima station in time for our Shinkansen ride to our next destination, so we picked up the pace after our meal, and wandered through the street of shops again on our way back to the ferry terminal. I particularly liked these little cheerful statues with headwear.
We collected our luggage, boarded the ferry, and then found the train station to take us back to Hiroshima quite uneventfully. We were kept extremely well entertained on the train reading all of the English words on the locals' bags and trying to figure out their meaning, though. "Have you known already? Blue Cross standard for Spice Girls! Love and Rock"
This one says "Spice edition; Girl is made of sweets and spices. Therefore, also the highest one for your fashionable life." Hilarious.
We got to Hiroshima and boarded our train to our next destination, Okayama. From there, we boarded another local train to Kurashiki, a little suburb full of traditional buildings. It was a kilometre or so's walk from the train station to our hotel, but with these surroundings, we certainly weren't complaining.
We even stumbled across one of the kindest locals we'd ever met, who helped us with directions by actually going out of her way and walking us all the way to our hotel, the Kurashiki Ivy Square hotel.
By the time we'd got ourselves installed in our hotel room (and cooled down a bit, the long walk from the train station dragging our luggage with us was certainly a warm one), we set out immediately in search of lunch, since it was about 3pm by that stage, and all we'd had since breakfast was an oyster each.
We searched and searched and searched in the streets near our hotel, but it would appear that the Kurashiki area keeps extremely strict mealtimes. No-one was serving lunch, and no-one was yet open for dinner. So we kept walking and walking and walking, and eventually found ourselves in the foodcourt at a department store back at the train station.
And so, this was the start of our long-awaited meal. Green fanta.
And lovely generous portions of udon noodles and tempura.
Feeling much better about life with our full stomachs, we headed back into the old town to see what could be seen. We thought we could see a Grecian temple down one street, which turned out to be the art museum.
This was the very fancy bank building...
And I'd have to say that this takes the prize for Tom's best statue impression.
And then we stumbled across the beautiful old canal.
We introduced Donald Duck to some swans...
I thought the timing of this shot was pretty amusing. A double swan!
Kurashiki is beautiful.
As soon as Tom spotted these tourists in a traditional boat wearing Panama hats, he yelled out "Ninjas!" again. He's a strange one, that man.
We kept wandering along the streets, in and out of the various shops, admiring all the buildings along the way. How beautiful is the gate on this place?
We found the "Rural Toy Museum", which turned out to be filled with amazingly intricate hand-crafted wooden toys that moved as you wound levers. These were the beer drinking bears. As you wound the lever, they raised their beer mugs to their lips.
As night started to fall we began searching for dinner, and had some problems finding a place with a menu in English that we could understand. We eventually got a recommendation from some locals for a tucked-away little place that was very nice (although we learned quickly that Kurashiki is not cheap!) albeit smoke-filled since Japanese restaurants allow people to smoke as they eat.
No comments:
Post a Comment