August 13th - Miyajima

This morning we took a ferry over to the island of Miyajima.  I'd heard that there were deer on this island, but I didn't quite realize how many there would be or how friendly they would be!

After visiting with the deer and seeing the more touristy area of the island, we started our trek up one of the mountains.  We picked the steeper of the climbs because Garrett had read that it was more rustic and scenic.  As an added bonus, we didn't encounter a single person climbing up while we were.

 Although the distance was only 3.2 kms, it was quite steep.  At the summit we reached 535m in elevation.  Oh, and the temperature went above 40 degrees with the humidex that day.  

The view and sense of accomplishment at the summit was worth it (although I may have inadvertently glared at a few tourists who took the gondola up).

When we'd first arrived on the island, I'd taken some pictures of the scenery.  After our hike, everything looked very different!  I'd seen a "tide schedule" when I was researching Miyajima, but I didn't realize how extreme it would be!  

On our way back to catch the ferry back to Hiroshima, we noticed many chairs, tripods and tarps set up along the coast, all facing out to sea.  When I first saw a few people set up, I remembered Truro (an inside joke with my family), and actually said out loud "maybe they're all set up to watch the tide come in?  People go pretty nuts about that sometimes".  After we saw thousands more spots reserved along the shore, I began to doubt my initial prediction.  Garrett Googled it on his phone (yay Internet!), and we were informed that the Miyajima Firework Festival that had been scheduled for 2 days prior had been delayed by the typhoon and was now on tonight instead!  What luck!  Osaka could wait - we had amazing fireworks to see tonight (one of the best in the world)!

(Even this deer is sitting on his tarp - ready to watch the fireworks!)
Most of Japan is on holidays right now for the Obon Festival, so there weren't many "tourists" sticking around for the fireworks, but there were many Japanese people coming in from outside of Miyajima to celebrate, and many wore their formal wear for the occasion.  I didn't want to be rude by taking pictures of them specifically, but you can see their traditional clothing in some of the photos that I took.

In order to make sure that we'd still make our train to Osaka that night (we already had our hotel booked), we had to leave the fireworks a bit early - but we caught the tail end from our ferry ride back to the mainland.

After a ferry ride, and train ride, we had to RUN back to our hotel to grab our backpacks, and then RUN with our heavy packs back to the train station, up stairs and escalators and across the building to catch the last train of the day.  I'm thinking of signing us up for Amazing Race next year!