Miyajima

04/05/09 SUNDAY

Today, we took a JR ferry to the island of Miyajima. Miyajima is famous for the floating shrine and the roaming deers. There are even warnings in tourist packets to beware of deers eating your passport or JR rail passes. We didn't believe it until we saw the deers munch on paper and eat so eagerly out of people's hands. They were adorable. Miyajima is also famous for their oysters, so we tried grilled and deep fried oysters. They were quite tasty!

The park and gardens on Miyajima were amazingly beautiful. We saw a couple taking their engagement photos. The lady was wearing a huge pink ball gown and the gentleman in a fancy tuxedo with the matching bow tie. Cute couple. I want my 30th birthday party here on Miyajima under a huge cherry blossom tree and we can have a Hanami party with blue tarp! :)

We took a nature hike up the mountain and saw this one temple that had the rolling pins up the stairway.  The rolling pins that are chants like in the movie the Golden Child with Eddie Murphy. Anyhow, Elgin felt the need to spin each one as he walked up the stairs. Ridiculous. When we finally got up to the top, Elgin and I decided that we would get ourselves a fortune and hoped that it was also in English since "fortune" was in English. Nope, it was all in Japanese. We took pictures of our fortunes, tied them to the wire and hopefully we'll find someone translate it for us soon. Then we walked to the beach side and saw people clam digging. Elgin decided to clam dig too with no claw or bucket. Ridiculous. 

One of my favorite parts was walking down the food and souvenir stands. We tried the leaf shaped pastries (baked and deep fried), lots of free green tea from every store, and had some vanilla honey soft serve ice cream. 

In the evening, we went to the Hiroshima Botanical Garden. The first weekend of April, the garden has a display of over 21,000 lights on the cherry blossom trees. I'm thinking it's going to be awesome, like Disneyland lights. Nope, it was some lights, and some lit of trees. But there were some pretty florals, but not as pretty as Miyajima.