Day 9 - Miyajima 宮島 (island)

I may have neglected to mention this but it was a beautiful sunny day and so it was perfect for going to see Miyajima. A walk and a train ride later and we were on the ferry to the island which swung by the famous torii which sits in the sea, and the Goju-no-to five storied pagoda before docking at Miyajima.

The first sight we saw was deer. These deer are allowed to roam free on the island and come down to the tourist areas in hope of getting a snack from the tourists. A lot of the literature warned us that the deer will eat anything, including rail passes. The deer aren't really tame but they were very used to people and were mostly fine being stroked by people which was kind of cool.

The torii was sat on the beach a few minutes walk around the coast from the ferry port. At high tide it looks like it's floating but when we saw it the tide was out so it was sat on the sand.

There was also a strange guy with a large red balloon and a small chair tied to him being filmed on the beach. You can just about see him in the middle picture. Anyway, torii and balloon dude seen it was time to head inland a little for the five storied pagoda.

After the pagoda we went on to the cable cars to the summit of Mt. Misen via a woodland trail. With Dave stopping on the way to get some beef yakitori (tender chunks of beef barbecued on a skewer and covered with a tasty sauce). I was tempted to get squid yakitori, which was pretty much the same thing as the beef apart from it was all one piece of squid, shaped like a Christmas tree. I passed on this occasion as I've never had squid that I liked but I wish I'd given it a try now, it could have been delicious.

I'm not a fan of heights. They terrify me. Nonetheless, I decided to give the cable cars a go, partly because Dave wanted to go up but also because I thought the views would be pretty awesome. I'm glad I went in the end even if it was terrifying because the views were amazing.

We were told there might be monkeys at the top of Mt. Misen but sadly we didn't see any so we went back down the terrifying mountain, monkeyless, took a couple more snaps and headed off back to Hiroshima sunburnt but happy.