宮島 Miyajima

I've been feeling pretty down the past few days, but trying to keep myself entertained by keeping up with new anime (FMA, Bleach, Kuroshitsuji) and doing fun things, like going to Pokemon Center with Nella and eating various kinds of cuisine in Namba with Ryoko and friends; Jess and Althea, respectively. I still haven't caught up on the adventures Andy and I had last weekend in Hiroshima and Miyajima though, so it's time for a little catch-up.

Miyajima was overwhelmingly beautiful. It's an island off the coast of Hiroshima and one of the three famous "views of Japan" known for their beauty. On the ferry ride over, I stuck my face in the ocean wind and was exhilarated. The pictures I took from the ferry aren't too fabulous, but you can get an idea.





Luckily for us, we managed to catch the very tail-end of the sakura, as they are all gone now (at least where I live).

On the island, there are tons of wild deer just hanging out looking for some food from tourists. It was kind of hilarious to see them sauntering around, mostly minding their own business, completely accustomed to the whirlwind of human activity around them.



They even pose for pictures. We saw a tour guide of sorts persuading one to stand with a group of tourists as they were having their picture taken in front of the torii.

The torii is the quintessence of Miyajima, probably, so we took a lot of pictures. Supposedly, it is the most stunning at high tide where it looks like it's "floating," but we were there as the tide was almost all the way out. This did mean, though, that we could take off our shoes and wander into the water a little bit, which was a little cold but nothing years of practice in the Pacific ocean didn't prepare me for.









The rest of the day we spent climbing Mt. Misen, which we misjudged in terms of time commitment. We saw a sign warning about wild monkeys, which I did not believe until I saw some... much like the deer, they were just chillin'. There was something distinctly East Asian about climbing a mountain via millions of tiny stone steps surrounded by luscious foliage and wild monkeys.



Andy said, "Didn't you know, the days I don't bike 100 km I have to climb a mountain."

About halfway through I lost steam (when we started paying attention to how much more we had left to go, it was 2.2 km [1.37 miles]) but with a lot of encouragement, I made it. We were thoroughly rewarded with the view from the very top of the mountain and also the knowledge of our baddassery.









After that, we took the gondolas down (which we could have taken up, but after all that I'm glad we didn't) and gradually made our way back to our hostel in central Hiroshima and then had delicious, spicy, cold tsukemen for dinner at a restaurant called Bakudan, which means bomb, so I'm glad someone has a dark sense of humor somewhere. I am notoriously weak when it comes to spicy food, and on a scale of 0-20 I chose 3, although the gradation was pretty steep according to their chart... I think flames started coming out of your mouth at around 7 or so. After dinner, we did some very last-minute 花見 as the flowers were about halfway gone, and found a party organized by 外人 in the Peace Park and chatted with some New Zealanders about life in Japan.