Visits Around Hiroshima

On the way back from our trip to Oita, we spent three days in Hiroshima City . By the time we arrived, the sakura were in full bloom and that meant tons of tourists, especially in Miyajima, which we visited on one of these days.

Our first supper once we arrived was of course a meal of okonomiyaki, Hiroshima style. Yum!

On our second day, we took the ferry over to Miyajima. The only other time that Dustin and I have been here was in the fall and everything certainly looked different clothed in blossoms. We spent the day at the aquarium, walking around town, and enjoying the views of the Seto Inland Sea from the top of Mount Misen. It was beautiful, but packed with people.

The next day was spent wandering around Hiroshima City. Like Miyajima, it was also pretty packed with tourists and blossom viewers and made me realize how tired I get being in large crowds of people. I am pretty glad that we live in our little city of Fukuyama and not the capital. I like the fact that it is almost shocking to see a tourist or backpacker and that crowds are only found on a few days a year when there is some festival or event. 

We all had a nice time, but I was pretty glad when we got back to Fukuyama and I was able to relax a bit. No one can accuse me of not getting enough fresh air and exercise this pregnancy! 

Miyajima Continued

After a quick exploratory walk around the town, we were able to find a small grocery store where we bought breakfast. We found a small shrine nearby that miraculously didn't have any deer wandering about and we ate our breakfast without being harassed.

Theo, attracting a few weird looks while finishing his breakfast

The tide was low, so after breakfast we headed over to the Itsukushima Shrine to take a closer look at the huge torii gate. There were coins placed as an offering into all of the small tidal pools surrounding the torii and imbedded into the base of the pillars. Theo was very interested in all of the little invertebrates that were in the tidal pools. There were crabs of all sizes, hermit crabs, snails, and I am sure lots of other creatures crawling around.

Dustin, the kids, and I beneath the torii at low tide

Offering money imbedded amongst the barnacles on the torii

Theo exploring the tidal flats

Karlee and William with the torii

Mid afternoon as the tide came in

After we had our fill of gawking at the shrine and torii, we found a much less crowded beach and let Theo swim and play the beach. It was a very sunny day so our skin could only handle a couple of hours on the beach before needing to seek shade.

Theo enjoyed making all sorts of jewelry out of seaweed

He also spent a good hour pretending that he was riding around on a jet ski

Theo made a birthday cake out of bits and pieces he found on the beach. Sand cake with seaweed frosting, snails, shells, glass and pine cone decorations and bamboo candles. Here he is blowing out the candles after singing "Happy Birthday" to himself.

We spent the rest of the day wandering the shopping streets and trying out various regional foods. Some local specialties that we nibbled on were salt water eel (anago) cakes, oysters, and deep fried momiji manju. Momiji manju is a specialty in Hiroshima prefecture and is a maple leaf shaped little cake filled with sweet red bean, custard, cream cheese, sweet green tea paste, chocolate, or a lot of other fillings. There were quite a few shops in Miyajima that made their manju fresh with an awesome machine. Some places even sold them battered and deep fried on a stick. It was heavenly.

The momiji manju machine in  action

Taunting William with the sweet goodness of custard filled, deep fried momiji manju

The torii at sunset

We had really wanted to hike the mountain on the island, which has bands of wild monkeys living on it, but since we decided to not spend one more sleepless night on the island, we didn't have time. We headed back to the mainland on the last ferry and had a long and tiring train ride back to Fukuyama.

Miyajima

Hiroshima Prefecture: Fukuyama City is the small box on
the right and Miyajima is the larger box on the left

In the end of September we all decided to visit Miyajima. This island is on the opposite side of Hiroshima Prefecture and a really popular tourist attraction. All of the of the hotels and ryokan were fairly expensive, but luckily there is a campground on the island that charges 300 yen (about 4$ Canadian) a night. I had shipped all of our camping gear about a week before I left, but by the middle of September when it still hadn't arrived, we started to wonder if we would have to cancel our trip to Miyajima after all. Lucky for us, only a few days before the trip all of our gear arrived.

Karlee and Dustin wait for the train all
loaded up with camping gear

We took the train from Fukuyama to Miyajimaguchi, which took about 2 1/2 hours, and then a quick ferry ride from the mainland to the island. One of the first things we noticed when arriving was that there were deer everywhere. The species on the island is the Sika deer, which is a bit smaller than the deer we are used to and never lose their white fawn spots.  The deer were completely accustomed to humans and were milling about, sleeping, eating people's food and even letting children pet them. They were charming for about the first 30 minutes and then became super annoying, especially after one tried to chomp at William's foot and head butted me when I tried to shoo it away. Luckily, it was one of the deer who had its antlers cut off. By the end of our weekend, even an animal lover like me wanted to kick one. It is very sad actually, since humans are completely to blame for the aggressive, begging, scavenger monsters that these little deer have become.

Theo and a deer inspecting each other

Theo on the ferry

William and I on the ferry

Karlee walking from the ferry to the Campground

A morning clash right next to our tent

The campground was fairly nice during the day, but once it got dark everything changed. Firstly, all the male deer around decided to retest who was in charge of the tents. There was pawing, grunting, and clashing of antlers. At one point during the wee hours of the morning, a deer must have knocked over someone's cooler, since there was a mad herd gallop of at least 10 deer from all points of the campground right past our tent. Once again, all of the males felt the need to fight over who had the rights to the spilled food.

View of the sunset from the campground beach

Laughing at one of Theo's ridiculous jokes

There were a number of people who decided to shoot fire crackers for a few hours. One group of campers only arrived near midnight and sounded like they were building a cabin with all of their tent peg hammering. There was absolutely no wind, so I am not really sure what they were so concerned about. I was almost looking forward to when Theo would wake up at 7:30 a.m. running, shouting, and wreaking vengeance on all of these noisy people. Unfortunately, these same people decided to loudly take down their tents and leave at 4:45 a.m., while Theo somehow slept through it all. To top it all off, a loudspeaker played a long and loud wake up call at 7 a.m. I might have been annoyed if it woke up the kids, but miraculously they both managed to sleep in a little.

Dustin and Theo heading for the toilet

After our crappy night, Karlee, Dustin, and I realized that there was no way we could possibly manage another night at the campground. We decided to explore the town and island until late in the evening, and take the last train back to Fukuyama that night.

To be continued...