There are classic pictures of certain places in Japan that most foreigners who have seen pictures of Japan have seen. The torii gates in the water off Miyajima island is one of those places. When the tide is in, the torii gates look like they are floating. We headed off to Miyajima to enjoy a day on this island, and it proved to be one of our favorite places that we went on our trip. We parked our car and took a ferry over to the island. It was cool because you could see the torii gates from the ferry, but the ferry docks on the far side of the town. The village itself is really fun and there are tons of vendors selling rice paddles (there were some minivan sized paddles here) which Miyajima is famous for, vendors selling tasty pastries made on the spot, and of course the ever pleasing conger eel buns! Nothing makes you smile like an eel bun. Like Nara, Miyajima is full of deer. The deer were very interested in our attempt to eat our PB&J sandwiches and made every effort to steal every last piece of our lunch. Sara has no luck with wildlife in Japan, and the deer were clearly in cahoots with the evil monkey from Nikko. We had to run to the top of the staircase to the pagoda to get away from the deer (they chased us about half way up the stairs). The very cool 5 story pagoda ended up being a great place to eat lunch.
After seeing the shrine, we hiked up and got a bus that took us to a ropeway that takes you up to the top of the mountain. It was well worth the price. Hiking up would have been a beast, although riding with the boys talking about what would happen if the cable snapped was less than ideal. At the top there was a hike up to the summit that went through some awesome shrines, stone formations, and of course the P90x Buddha. One of the shrines is the home of the eternal flame which evidently was used to light the flame at the Hiroshima peace park. To save a bit of cash and get some hiking in, we decided to walk down the mountain back to the shrine. It was only a couple of miles, no worries since it was all downhill, right? Well, as we should have guessed, in Japan downhill really means 59,419 steep stone steps. Plus Abby fell asleep so I had to carry her in my arms the whole way down (though Sara helped for a bit). That was a beast. Oh well, it was a really pretty hike and Emma and the boys had a blast playing in the river that followed the trail. When we got back, the tide was out, so we let the boys walk out to the shrine and explore on their own. It's fun to see Andrew come into his own and do his own exploring. He took it upon himself to climb a pretty steep rock wall and he had fun playing in the sand as the tide came in. On the way out, we had some tasty pastries. Miyajima was definitely worth the day we spent there.
