The next stop on our trip across Japan was a little island just 30 minutes East-ish of Hiroshima, ostensibly in the Inland Sea. (pics are here)
We took the ferry straight from the Peace Park to the island, about a half an hour or so's ride during which I fought sleep desperately, the miserable bus-nap I had taken the night before not quite sufficing. >.> However, when we arrived at the island, we had to race to our lodging to drop off our stuff, which was less than fun... (that's why all the pics at the beginning were sort of blurry - they were taken mid speed-walk). Apparently Miyajima is full of tame deer; (on a scale of one to Nara it barely rated, but you know whatevs). The deer were totally chill around people and would jump you for food. (We realized this danger quickly.)
We walked past a bunch of temples including a great big one set into the bay, as well as various pagodas and shrines. Then we snaked through a residential area, and finally pulled up to our ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. IT WAS SO COOL. Very old-school, like tatami-mat floors and rice paper screens in the rooms. Awesomeness.
After splitting up into our rooms, we headed out to see the island before the temples closed and the sun went down. We first went to Itsukushima Shrine, which was the big shrine in the bay that we passed. It's built on the beach on stilts, so that when the tide comes in it looks like the building is floating :O (We unfortunately didn't see it then, though... :/) We went in and took a bunch of pictures of the Ootorii (the giant red shrine gate that is out on the water) from the pier inside the shrine) and then wandered around the beach for a while checking out the sights and trying to get a little closer to the torii - the tide wasn't out far enough to get out there. but I went out as far as I could (probably gaijin-photobombing a million Japanese pictures, but whatevs >.> haha)
After that we split off from the main group for a little while and explored the backroads of the island a bit - it was an island after all, so we were pretty sure we wouldn't get lost. We found a big tree that looked like a definite totoro habitat :D and also got some really cool pictures of the bay from high up. After wandering a little more (and doing some souvenir-shopping) we headed back to the lodge for dinner.
Dinner was a literally enormous feast with like eight or nine tiny dishes per person. I don't eat a lot of fish or vegetables, but that was pretty much all they gave us and I wasn't gonna waste it, haha. We had a leisurely dinner, and then I donned my yukata (a casual sort of kimono provided by the inn) and went downstairs to live it up in the public bath. The set-up is like this: there are girls' and boys' sides, and you basically get undressed, wash up, and then luxuriously soak in a giant hot tub for as long as you can stand it. *__* it was wonderful. :D
After that we lounged about the room for some time just surfing the web, doing some homework, and getting to know each other (we were grouped up pretty randomly for rooms, so I didn't really know two of the girls at all). Finally we set up our futons on the floor and settled in for the night pretty early.
We had to get up early the next morning, as we had to get the first ferry off the island in order to get the train to the Hiroshima shinkansen (bullet train) station in order to get on the right shinkansen to Kyoto. Before we left, though, I had another delicious traditional-style meal for breakfast, and got to try Japanese maple candy! :D And that's the tale of our trip to Miyajima. :D
Sorry this took a while to post... real life is, how you say, fuben.
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