And the ferry took us here! To Miyajima Island, which is famous for its floating Torii gates. This was our first view of them as we passed them on the ferry.
The island impressed us immediately with how picturesque it is. It functions almost solely as a tourist destination these days, I believe.
Although perhaps not all Japanese deer are polite. We found two that were desperate to get into the air conditioned shops and out of the heat. The shop assistants had to keep shooing them away.
We kept wandering through the shops, and came across this giant rice scoop, made from one massive piece of timber! Pretty impressive!
We had heard that Miyajima is famous for its oysters, and that quickly became apparent. They were everywhere! We decided to treat ourselves to a fancy lunch, since we'd stuck to fairly economical meals in Hiroshima, and chose a restaurant with a very cool window display. These are oysters, by the way, in case that isn't obvious.
We settled ourselves in, and admired our surroundings. Unfortunately this is a blurry shot, but we were most impressed with the vibrancy of our fellow customers' shoes!
But they paled in significance once our food came out. These were the fresh oysters, served with lemon and sauce. They were enormous! And very nice.
I'm going to pretend that we took this shot to demonstrate the comparative size of the shells, and not because we're idiots. They're enormous!
We had, fortunately, decided to go all out and also ordered the grilled oysters. Tom was a little doubtful about them, but they smelled good. And they were delicious! And again, absolutely enormous. Considering that we were seated in a restaurant (rather than buying them on a street), the price was pretty great. We would have paid an absolute fortune for these in Australia.
We also ordered some soba noodles and tempura to make sure we had enough fuel for the rest of the afternoon...
And then moved on to continue exploring the delights of the Miyajima shops, gradually making our way towards the Torii gate and nearby Itsukushima shrine. We had a bit more fun first though... suits him, no?
We admired a little cake making factory...
And had to sample some of the produce of course...
We patted penguins... although how that poor little guy was surviving the heat is beyond me!
And we made it out to the waterfront again. And I may have gone a little bit crazy taking photos. It's so picturesque!
There was a row of stone lanterns all along the waterfront (or what would be the waterfront at high tide). They'd look beautiful all lit up at night. And there's the Torii gate in the background.
There were deer everywhere.
Even little baby deer! Very cute.
And so incredibly tame. You could literally go up to them and pat them on the head, and they wouldn't flinch.
We decided to stop in the shade for a water break, in full view of the Torii gate.
And were quickly joined by a deer, who was extremely interested in the contents of Tom's bag.
They will stop at nothing to steal your food, people!
We decided it was probably time to move on then, since that deer had obviously staked a claim on that spot. As Tom started walking away, he was chased by the very determined deer! Looks like the claim had been made on his backpack!
As you can see, the deer responded appropriately to some finger wagging and tsk-tsk-ing on Tom's part, and we made our escape. All of that green stuff you can see on the ground between us and the Torii gate was seaweed-ey mush. We decided to forgo the excitement of walking over it to the gate and just enjoy from afar.
It's pretty impressive. Apparently the top of it is filled with rocks to weight it down so that it doesn't float away.
Just nearby is the Itsukushima shrine, outside of which is a little stable building with a horse statue inside. Tom, of course, had to pat it.
And from there we got to witness this firsthand. A deer was wandering around investigating the contents of each of the baskets on the front of these bicycles. He found a tourist map in one of them, appropriated it, and proceeded to devour it in the street.
And then we approached the Itsukushima shrine. This is it at low tide. Obviously at high tide, the water flows all the way through. Unfortunately the smell was not particularly pleasant at low tide, but the view made up for it.
We paid our admission, and went for a wander through. I may have gone a little nuts taking pictures again.
The Torii gate...
The Torii gate again...
Sick of it yet? The Torii gate again, from the centre of the shrine.
The Torii gate yet again! But I did mix it up by throwing in a fancy curled stone lantern this time!
Back to plain Torii gate again.
Now us and the Torii gate!!
OK, I'll move on. The shady corridors were certainly a welcome change to the heat of the sun outside.
And they were certainly quite beautiful.
Everywhere we looked there was a great view!
But we eventually made our way down the last corridor, back outside again.
And Tom immediately spotted this opportunity to pretend to be a monk. But he couldn't decide which personality he should be. So he covered both bases. Donald Duck, and Tom. Both kids at heart.
We then kept wandering through the shops, trying out our fierce faces with Samurai swords...
And admiring the teeny tiny little vans. This is the same model of three-wheeled van that we saw all through Europe!
The whole place is beautifully maintained.
Most people that visit Miyajima just do it as a day trip, and go back to stay at Hiroshima. When we were planning our trip, we had decided to have one night of spoiling ourselves, and to book a stay at a Ryokan on the island for the night. A Ryokan is a traditional style of Japanese accommodation, with tatami mats on the floor and futon beds. They're certainly not cheap! One night's stay cost us in the order of $470 AUD (although it included both dinner and breakfast), but we decided that we could justify it for just one night.
And it was pretty incredible. You can only just make it out in this photo, but from our traditionally-screened window, you could just see the Torii gate peeking out from behind the trees.
Here's a better view from that same window. We were pretty excited.
We were even more excited when we discovered that we could get Wifi in our room (first time on the trip so far), so I settled in to send a few emails and do a bit of administration, while snacking on edamame beans. It was great.
And then we were called to the restaurant to begin our dinner feast. We were a few minutes late, so a lot of the food was already laid out on the table when we arrived.
And a feast it certainly was!
I counted eight courses! Which explains Tom's "I don't think I can eat one more bite" expression in this photo. It was amazing.
But wait, there was more! Our ninth course was dessert, ice-cream! We asked if we might be able to eat it a few floors up in a different restaurant that had great views of the water (and the Torii gate). They obliged (we think we were the only people staying there that night, so we got spoiled rotten), and we happily ate our ice-cream with this view while the sun set.
Not bad, huh?
And it just got better as night fell and the lights came on.
We briefly considered going for a night-time stroll to see the town lit up by night, but on our extremely full stomachs and with the air outside still unrelentingly humid, we decided that we could appreciate it quite well from afar.
When we eventually made our way back to our room, our little table and chairs had been replaced with futon bedding, all laid out! It was lovely (although this photo was actually taken the following morning, which explains the sunlight coming in through the window). And very comfortable! I slept like a log.
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