Japan Kyoto to Hiroshima

Thursday Oct 9, 2008
We left Kyoto by train early in the morning and were in Hiroshima by 9:30 am. There are lockers at the train stations, so we put our packs into on and caught the next train to the ferry terminal. We took the ferry to the Island of Miyajima, this island is most famous for the "floating" torii (torii = shinto shrine gate).

Scott and I in the tidal zone checking out the gate

I'm the little white speck at the bottom of the closest pole - wow the gate was huge! Whole Camphor trees make up each of the gate posts This was later in the day just before we got back on the ferry to go back to Hiroshima - the tide came in - so the gate was "floating"

We also chose to hike to the top of one of the mountains on the island, Mt. Misen. We took the path less travelled, so we never really did figure out how far it was exactly in distance (the path down had signs the whole way). We did know for sure that it only took us 2 hours to get to the top (yeah! the gym is finally paying off) and we gained 534 m in elevation.

The view of the gate from the trail up

The island also has wild deer that are very, very tame - they will eat anything, including any paper you have in your hands and your loose clothing Yikes! But they are pretty cute.

A couple of the "Wild" deer

This video is one that Scott took of me trying to escape from one of these deer, I couldn't stop giggling the entire time

After our day on the island we made it back to Hiroshima and checked into our hotel. We had a great view from our window. The view was of the river and the A-Bomb Dome (one of the last remaining buildings from before the A-Bomb - the bomb exploded almost directly above this building, which is why it wasn't completely destroyed).