We arrived to Miyajima pretty late in the day, so we didn't have time to visit the temple, which is the first thing we did Saturday morning after eating our traditional breakfast. Gosh, I love ryokans.
At the temple our group did the tourist thing where we took a group picture in front of the Torii. Oh, and there was a wedding going on in the shrine. Cool stuff.
Then it was free time. Instead of the typical looking around in the shops I decided to go on a hike with Mio, Devin, Kenny, and David. We were later joined by Ben and Rachel. Oh, and we found a waterfall. And being the silly 20-somethings (I wanted to say teenagers, I did) that we are we of course had to take off our socks and wade around the water for a bit. Then hurry hurry up the mountain because we did have a bus to catch.
So I gave Rachel my camera, so no pics of the mountain top. Sorry. Maybe I'll steal some pics from Dave or Kenny.
When I say hurry hurry. I mean we booked it. We had about fourty minutes to cover about 2 kilometers of uphill mountain trekking. The original group had seven people. The first group to make it to the top of the mountain was Kenny, David and myself. I almost gave up at a few places, but I was with two strapping boys who wanted to see the view from the top so I got Kenny to carry my purse. When we made it to the top I must say, the view was stunning. Just gorgeous. And then I treated myself to some of the most delicious ice cream ever. Actually I had eaten that ice cream before, but after hiking at a ridiculous pace that normal ice cream bar was transformed into a delicious medley of ice cream, chocolate and wafer.
Just as we were about to head back down, Mio and Ben caught up. So we enjoyed the view a bit more before booking it back to the hotel to pick up our bags and make a dash for the bus station. Our initial group of four heading off to Okayama grew to 9. The more the merrier. All in all, I think it was Mio, Kenny, David, Rachel, Kevin, Devin, Jason, Ben, and myself. Good times.
Ladder to the loft bed. And a bar. For pull ups! Go Ben, go!
We got to Okayama, then caught a train to Kurashiki, where we checked into our hostel, which was cool cool cool. Bunk beds and a crazy loft bed. Then dinner in one of those arcaded shopping areas. It was this pretty good shop. I got the unagi, which was pretty good for being slightly over done. And then we checked out the historic canal area by night. Tried to be stupid college kids and take one of the boats out along the canal but realized there were no paddles. Head back to the hostel, hung out and slept.
Boom. Done.
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