Japan Trip Part Five

Went down early to our hotel restaurant for the already booked breakfast buffet to be pleasantly surprised by the spread available. In short, ALL the food items that I've eaten for breakfast over the past 4days were available in that one buffet alone.

The highlight of the day is our trip to Miyajima island, famous for its floating torii.

Very nice oh, that's not a postcard photo, I really took it.. Just nice we went at high tide, so we can see the torii at its most beautiful (actually not just nice, I went to check the tide forecast first one)

We took the JR ferry (free!) from JR Miyajima station (30min ride from Hiroshima).
Sights from ferry:



One of the main reasons why I like Miyajima so much, is not because of the scenery, but because deers actually roam freely on the entire island. The Japanese think deers are sacred animals so no harm is done to them.




I really really wanted to feed them, but I couldn't find any vendors selling the deer biscuit (I remember the first time i went Japan, we went to Nara and they had deers there too, and yours truly tasted abit of the deer biscuit cos it looked really delicious. I have no valid excuse. I was 15).

As a result, the deers here were really hungry. And they all seem to have a penchant for eating paper, one snatched my map from my hand when I wasn't paying attention and gobbled up the entire piece lor.



The floating torii is part of Itsukushima-jinja shrine. Previously, the island is considered sacred, so people can only visit the shrine but they had to enter through the floating torii.


I like the red colour architecture of the shrine.



After that, we sort of milled around looking at more deers, shopping for sourvenirs and making deer jokes.



The other main attraction of the island is taking the ropeway to the top of Mt Misen to take in the view, but we decided that was too expensive ($30). and i vehemently vetoed the 4hr long hike to the top of the mountain. So Liang decided we should go look for the deer park in the hopes of seeing more deer. According to the guide, it'd only take 20minutes up the mountain, so I went along with the idea. Oh What a Fool am I!

Took a break at this sakura park where we discovered that deers actually like eating the sakura blossoms.



And I saw Sandy!! Aka mini long haired dachshund, beige in colour. (Have I mentioned that the Japanese absolutely LOVE dachshunds?? I saw 5times more dachshunds here than in my entire lifetime)

And how come this 'Sandy' is prettier, faster, stronger, braver (he wanted to attack the deer) and guai-er than my own Sandy?

After that, we hiked and we hiked and still cannot find the so-called Momijidan deer park. Hiked for 40minutes lor, i started to have the sneaking suspicion that Liang is leading me by the wrong way to trick me into climbing all the way to the mountain top.

Then finally, we saw Momijidan garden, with no deer in sight. And I put my foot down and insist that we head back.
(We conclude that rather than staying obediently in the park, all the deers decide to roam around the jetty where they can hang around tourists. )

Guess who took this: The mother of all self-shot pics, can see the sign somemore lor:


As we head back to the jetty, we tried one of their local delicacies: oyster. Since we both hate oysters, we decided to go for their fried breaded oysters. The oyster took me by surprise as it is still so fresh that it has alot of juice lor, so I succeeded in getting oyster juice on myself.
Also shopped at their local produce stall and bought back some yummy cakes for sourvenirs (sorry u guys, the cakes are only good for 10days).

We then went back to Hiroshima, where it was another mad scramble to get our luggage from the hotel and buy lunch to catch our train back to Tokyo.
Yet another bento lunch:



After a gruelling five hour journey. we finally arrived in Tokyo, and made our way to Ueno station as our hostel is located there.
This is when we faced our big major booboo of the trip.
Cos we somehow lost the reservation of the hostel on which the directions are printed, and I did not write another copy of the directions in my notebook as I assumed that Liang printed, so we ended up totally lost because the small hostel is not reflected on any map we looked at.
We just walked and walked around the huge station with our heavy luggage but no one could help us. Finally, decided to go into a internet cafe and beg the nice Caucasian using the com to let us use for 3minutes...

But still we got lost! As it was already dark and the hostel is in such a ulu place, and looked so nondescript that we walked by it at least 10times. Every single time I walked by I would look at it, and think it's a carpark as there's a huge car park sign next to it.
Thanks to a very very very nice gentlemen, who didn't know where's our hostel and didn't know a word of english, but just took our hotel address and asked around the neighbourhood, and a very nice restaurant boss who took out her street directory, he finally led us all the way to the doorstep of the hostel. SO NICE!!! I gave him a 90degree bow of gratitude.
So it was such that we only took 2hrs to reach our hostel when actually it only takes 10minutes from the JR station.

Immediately headed out to dinner at a fast-food chain.
Yummy food (cheese curry ricebowl and salad with beef rice bowl)



And a waiter who is super efficient and hardworking, he was the only one running the whole place and was cooking, cleaning, washing and collecting money at top speed.
Think he looks quite cool too:


Sights around Ueno (gives me the feeling of bugis + abit of geylang):
seedy Pachinko (gambling slot machines) parlours and lots of young punks.


Ended a stressful evening with a McPork burger haha.. super cheap 1.20 only.