Miyajima

Miyajima is the name of a famous temple located just outside of Hiroshima. This is the location of the famous red (-ish orange) temple gate built in the water.

We took a ferry to get there, because the water was really cold, and we didn't feel like swimming with our backpacks on. We had been informed that we could see "lots of deer" on the island. Although this statement turned out to be factually true, and we did see lots of deer, the deer are highly domesticated, and basically live just outside the pier, and aggressively harass tourists for food. Case in point: the snack I bought for myself (after seeing the automated maple-leafy cream-ish filled donuty-bread type maker I couldn't resist) was almost snatched away from me by a deer. They seem to operate by the principle that any food that is out in the open is fair game. We saw one deer eating a pamphlet, and tried to get it to stop, but the deer probably thought we were trying to steal it's lunch, and quickly gobbled it up. Sad. A lot of the deer seem to have ticks, are missing hair, and possibly suffer from diseases which they are prone to since they live in such high densities.

Anyhow, after looking at all the touristy things on the island, we decided to climb to the top of the mountain, which according to our cartoon map was only 3 staircases away. Several hours later, we finally reached the top of the mountain, and cursed our not-even-pretending-to-remotely-be-drawn-to-scale map. After enjoying the beautiful view, and deciding that we would not pay $5 for a small bottle of water, we decided to take the cable car down.

When approaching the cable car station, we saw this really cute monkey (see below) and I took a bunch of pictures, thinking this might be the only monkey we would see. This turned out not to be the case. When we got to the cable car station, we discovered that it was closed, possibly due to being over-run by monkeys. I think we walked in on some sort of territory dispute, because some of these monkeys were NOT happy. They were screeching and chasing after each other and everything. After a while, things calmed down, and started grooming each other, and resumed shitting all over the building. Hilarious.

Not being able to read the Japanese sign (or really understand what the one person we ran into up there was saying beyond the fact that the mountain was "walking only"), we couldn't decipher exactly why the station was closed. The funny thing is that the cable cars were still running, and we conceivably could have just climbed into a cable car. I have four theories to explain this (each more plausible than the last): 1) the station was closed for the season, 2) they were testing the cars after doing repairs, 3) the monkeys who had broken into the station were jumping on the right buttons, or 4) the monkeys had learned how to operate the cable cars so as to send each other down to the town below to get beer.

Anyhow, after walking back down the other side of the mountain, we headed back to Hiroshima, and found a bar that just happened to have a "happy hour" that ended just when we needed to catch our overnight bus back to Nagoya anyways. Speaking of overnight buses: worst sleep ever. But, it combined travel and accomodation expenses into one reasonable price (and I did sleep really well on the way TO Hiroshima, so I shouldn't complain).

Ok, that's it for now. Will post on what happened in Hiroshima (and eventually Hokkaido, my winter break, etc) at some point in the future. I miss you all, and if you're going to be in Ottawa/Montreal between March 30th and April 5th, then you should let me know becasue I'll be back in Canada for my (one) med school interview.