We left the hotel and walked a couple of blocks to our tour bus. I could already tell it would be a hot but lovely day. We took a 30 minute-ish trip to Miyajima, and of course, when you're bored on the bus, (crappy) pictures are bound to be taken.
Here's the outside of the Peace Museum, with a fountain in the shot.
More of Hiroshima as we were leaving.
We arrived in Miyajima and had about 15 minutes to spare before we were to board our ferry. I was so excited to see the ocean. It feels like it's been forever!
We soon boarded our ferry (taken on the boat) and departed in no time.
Oh my god there were SO MANY JELLYFISH. Someone tried to count them as we passed and gave up after a while. I definitely would not want to swim in that water.
Our destination in sight.
The torii gate of the Itsukushima Shrine.
On land again! And a shot of the boat we were actually on.
SO CLOSE!
lol Saw this as we were getting off the port. It's cute.
We had to gather around here in the heat while everyone got organized.
"Miyajima Town". Also Dan, who was in my group.
While we were waiting, Bambi came to greet us. Miyajima is known for its deer roaming around, and there were quite a few of them.
Finally we departed. We first went to Itsukushima Shrine, and had to walk through a lot of touristy streets to get there.
The other, less awesome torii at the entrance of the shrine.
OMG BEACH. I wanted to jump down there and splash in the water so bad. ;A;
Anyway, so our tour started with Itsukushima Shrine. As you can probably tell, the tide comes up under the shrine around noon, and it looks like the shrine is floating. Unfortunately we were too early to see this, but you can see the wet sand. Also, there's the other side of the first torii gate.
There happened to be a couple getting wedding photos taken, lol.
More shrine.
A noh stage. I didn't think there would be one at a shrine. O.o But I don't really know much about noh.
Cool bridge. This used to actually be the entrance, but I guess they made where we came in the new entrance since tourist arrive from the ferry side so much now.
As we were exiting the shrine, we walked over this stream, and I thought it looked pretty.
From here, we basically were free to do what we wanted. However, since they had skyrope tickets for us (which we basically paid for when we paid the program), it would have been a complete waste to not take the ride, so most (if not all) of us headed to the loading area for the ride.
So tiny! This one was ours.
Away we go!
The view behind me.
The view in front.
The view behind me was much more interesting though. This was taken pretty much at the end of that line.
We hopped out and went straight to the next line, which took us from there to the top of Mt. Misen, which was a pretty short ride. This sky car was a lot bigger, but we had to stand the whole way. I didn't get a picture of the car itself, but this was our view:
We quickly arrived at the destination, and man was it gorgeous!!
Of course I had to get a photo with it.
I tried to take a video of the view, because it was just too pretty, but for some reason, my camera was snapping photos on the video setting, and wouldn't actually record anything. D: That was disappointing.
I really wanted to stay up there forever, lol, but it was hot, and the girl I was kind of tagging along with wanted to head down and get lunch/do other things, so we started heading back. We took the same sky trams back, and then walked down the mountain from the first loading place. Since I had bought some new batteries, I took a couple of pictures I had tried to take on the way up:
These fish were huge!
I think we took a wrong turn, because we didn't remember passing a place like this, but I thought it looked spiffy, so I took a picture.
Apparently I didn't take anymore photos until we got on our ferry to go back, but in the meantime, the girl I was with (who's name I don't even know orz) and I got lunch of nikuman (meat buns) which was DELICIOUS, and custard/flan soft cream, mmmm. It was yummy, though not very filling. Good thing I ate a big breakfast, lol. We both wanted to go down to the ocean, but decided not to. It would have been a hassle really, since we had no way of drying our feet, and we didn't really have time. I'm sure I'll get a chance to splash around in the water eventually. In any case, by the time we were close enough to do anything, it was high tide and there wasn't really any beach to go on. Oh well. We were one of the first to return to the meeting grounds and chilled inside the ferry ticket place with a few others. When it was time for everyone to get together, no one else had come, so we started to worry and tried to figure out where everyone else was. Someone finally called the girl I was with and said they were out by some trees, because the CIEE staff wanted to get a photo of everyone by the ocean, so we wtf'd because no one told us to meet there instead, but headed out there anyway. That ended up being pointless because they didn't take a picture, lol. Whatever. We all gathered there and then went straight back to the loading area and waited for our ferry to arrive. We boarded and headed back to the first area (which I guess is Miyajima too? I'm not entirely sure).
Upon our arrival, we boarded back onto our bus and went to Hiroshima station.
Noooooo. D:
Then our Tokyo-bound Shinkansen came. D:
