Tuesday 8th September

Possibly my favourite place so far.

Took about 30mins by train to the ferry port, my first time so far on this trip to travel by ferry, was quite excited, like a little child te he. The ferry was ready to go which was great, no need to wait. Thought it might take a little while, so found a nice spot by the window and shared the rest of my dinner from last night for brunch, was perfect amount for the day ahead. When finished eating the ferry was slowing down ready to port on the other side, didn't take long at all, but a great trip over, very calm.

Departed onto Miajima Island, passed through the gates and my first siteing on the other side, to my amazement was deer, wandering around everywhere and people were stroking them and feeding them, I could not contain myself. I had heard that deer sometimes roam around but didn't for a second think you would be able to stroke them. They were so friendly, I loved every minute. Could have stayed there for ages, but a lady come out shaking a bag of what I can only imagine was their food and they all ran over to her and followed her. Was great to see.

We wandered around until we found the famous Tori Gate out in the sea, now considering we have seen millions of these we did not think this would be so impressive, but it was def a sight worth seeing, we had our pic taken infront of it and spent a while looking around the area near it and the views out at sea, quite a spectacular sighting. Followed some signs to the cable car passed many little shops, some of which had excellent carved figures of Buddah's etc, were quite something, spent a while looking around, then up to the cable cars where we purchased a one way ticket up to the top of the nearby mountain. In fact the journey consisted of two cable cars to get to the area where we could continue on foot. The views from the cable cars were amazing, you looked right over all the small Islands off of the coast of Hiroshima, there were lots of them dotted around. Was a nice cable car journey. Once up on top of the mountain, we took many photos of the views looking out over the islands, it was a little misty but not too bad. We went to follow the mud tracks to head back down the mountain when we came across many many monkeys, acting in their typical naughty ways. One jumped up onto the cafe doors and rattled them as hard as he could until a worker chased him away, they were playing, fighting and generally monkeying around te he. We stopped for a while watching the little babies bother their families and fall all over the place, some were even grooming the deers which was very strange indeed. Was great entertainment, caught some on video. Our walk down through the woodland on the side of the mountain was very ineresting indeed, I stupidly hiked with my flip flops on, so was tripping and sliding all over the place, Ad could not stop laughing at me, but the tables always turn and now it was my turn to laugh. Ad found an unwanted friend, a wasp that took quite a liking to him. At first he tried to shoo it away with his hand and this did not work, so he ran a little hoping to out run the little thing, thinking it had gone, he would stop and look back at me, but no it was still there. There he was dancing like a chicken trying to get rid of this little creature, I thought this was hilarious, but it just got funnier after he had repeated this same run-stop-chicken dance about 6 times, I almost wet myself watching him, if only I had filmed it. About an hour later we reached the bottom where we had caught the cable car. Free shuttle bus ride to the shops and a nice stroll back to catch our ferry. A very very enjoyable day indeed.