Today we went to Miyajima Island to see the floating Torii and Mount Misen. Steven dropped us off at the train station early this morning (thanks, Bub!), we grabbed some breakfast at Andersen’s bakery, took the train to Mijajimaguchi, and then took the ferry to the island.

In Dave Barry’s book, Dave Barry Does Japan, he jokes that Americans in Japan stand out like giant water buffalos. Of course it would rain for our trip to Miyajima, so we were not just water buffalos… We were water buffalos in ponchos (a bright red one, to be specific). Apparently, Japanese rely primarily on umbrellas and find the poncho wearing water buffalo a rare species indeed. The poncho did a great job keeping my top half dry (not so much for Charles, though), but it seemed to take the water it was blocking from the top and dump it all at the bottom of my my capris. I also found that socks were completely useless, since they seemed to keep my feet wet for longer than they otherwise would have been. When we got back to Iwakuni, I broke down and purchased an umbrella so that I could be a more cleverly disguised water buffalo.

We had a pretty good time at Miyajima, despite the bad weather. We checked out the shrine (and part of a traditional Japanese wedding) and then hiked up the lower part of Misen Mountain to the ropeway station near the top. From there, we hiked up about a kilometer to the very very top of the mountain. There were supposed to be monkeys, but we never saw any. They’re probably afraid of water buffalo anyway.

From there, we hiked 2.5 km down from the top of the mountain back down to sea level, which was a little bit rough on my knee (I can go up hill, but down hill is difficult). For that reason, I had to go one legged down most of the stone steps so that I could keep my right leg straight, which meant that it took us quite a while. On top of that, the rain made the path very slippery. We really could have used one of those roughly translated Japanese warning signs, such as “Pass downward willingly” or “Very much slippery under”, but there was no such notice and I fell on my rear once and had several close calls.

We finally made it to the bottom, checked out Daishoin Temple and the 500 rakan (Buddhist desciple) statues, the 5 story pagoda, and then made for lunch. Sheryl and Dad told us that we absolutely had to get some akonomayaki while were there, so we searched until we found the restaurant. Akonomayaki involves a very strange combination of a crepe type pancake topped with fried noodles, bacon, and cabbage, a fried scrambled egg, and akonomayaki sauce. It was not bad, though I don’t know that I loved it enough that I’ll have any wild cravings when we come back to the U.S. I did, however, order some sake, so between that and the heat of the grill, I felt much better after lunch.

Since the tide was out, we were able to walk out and inspect the “floating torii”, which was no longer floating, before making our way back to the ferry and back to Iwakuni in search of dry socks and ibuprofen. We plan to eat dinner at Gnesh tonight, which we hear is quite good (another Indian restaurant here in Iwakuni).