Miyajima - day 9

This morning we woke up very early to go Miyajima, an island not far from Hiroshima. The island is known for its temple and the "floating" torii gate in front of it. The reason they say it floats is because when the tide is high, the torii stands in the middle of the water. When the tide is low, you can walk all the way to the torii. High tide was at 8h16 this morning or at 20h30 tonight, but then it would have been dark. We took the train and then the ferry and went straight to the torii gate to see it submerged in the water. It was a very nice sight! After walking through the temple, we wandered around by the shore and then headed to another very nice temple up on the hill. The highest mountain on the island is Mount Misen (535 meters above sea level) and you can get there by cablecar. We actually wanted to walk up, but it was closed due to a typhoon that had damaged the path. From the cablecar the view was stunning! From the end station (430 meters), you still need to walk the rest to get to the top. So we did, but it was a very tiring climb with a bunch of temples and holy rocks here and there. The view from the top was amazing! You look out over the Japanese Interior Sea in which there are more than 3000 islands!! From the top we walked all the way down back to the Itsukushima shrine and the floating torii. The walk down was pretty long and tiring. When we got to the shore, the tide was nearly at its lowest point, so we walked all the way to the torii. It's a good thing we were wearing our hiking boots! A great thing about Miyajima is that just like in Nara, there are wild deer everywhere! They say they have been living there for over 6000 years... so obviously we (or rather, Nat) took tons of pictures of them. We took the boat back and then the train, but when we got to Hiroshima, it started raining like crazy! We walked back to the hostel with our umbrellas, but still got pretty wet... so decided to take a nice warm shower! The hostel is great, we have a private room with our own bathroom and even a TV! For dinner we headed into the city centre by streetcar and went to a sushi-belt restaurant. As usual, it was delicious! After dinner we walked around for a bit and then went back to the hostel.

Weather: cloudy, but very hot; heavy rain in the afternoon