Osaka Adventure: Day 4- Miyajima and Hiroshima

Ohayogozaimasu from Osaka!  Yes, we made it back last night after a long day of travel.  Paul is still sleeping, so I decided to update the blog.  Pretty sure he caught whatever I had last week and is under the weather today.  I told him we should take it easy today and not venture out too far from our place.

Enough of the bad news... on to more fun stuff!  We checked in after dark the day before, so we didn't see how gorgeous the view was!  Look how pretty!

So yesterday I told you about how we missed out on the hotel dinner?  Well, we made up for it with the breakfast!  They had quite a spread featuring western style and japanese style breakfast items.  My first plate consisted of the western style stuff which wasn't anything special.  Hello, should've known right?  But Paul got me some miso soup which really hit the spot!  Then we tried their katsu curry, which put me over the top.  I was feeling pretty miserable after we ate.  Geez, I hardly do that nowadays, so i felt so yucky.  

But, it was worth it!  Ha ha.  After breakfast we finished packing and headed off to explore the island. We checked out and said goodbye to the nice staff at this hotel.  We had a futon room, which was probably the only downside to staying here. Other than that, I would definitely stay here again!  Let's put it this way, the room was way bigger than our Airb&b!

 So we made our way to the ropeway so that we could catch the awesome view...  More on that later.  We must've missed this torii gate when we passed by yesterday. 

Decisions, decisions.  There was a shuttle bus to take you to the ropeway, or do we take the 10 min walk?  Hmmm... remember now, 10 minutes for Japanese people = 20 minutes for the rest of us! LOL!

 We decided to "exercise" and walk.  What we don't have pictures of is the brutal path we took. It was super steep and not for pedestrians.  I'm sure the cars that passed us were thinking we are dumb tourists!


Once we made it to the ropeway, we saw that the park stroll was much nicer!

Ummm, what they fail to mention is that those steps are damn steep!

We finally made it to the ropeway!

Here's the view from our gondola...

When you get off the first gondola, they pack you into the second one.  I mean packed like rush hour in Tokyo.  We finally made it to the top and what do we see?  Nothing.

There was very little visibility when we first go there, then a cloud came and then we couldn't see anything!

That's when we decided to leave and head back to the ropeway.  I'm such a sucker for these photo ops.  LOL!

When we got off, we decided to look around the park area before heading back to the main street.   Paul did his best Kramer's pose here...

This bridge was so pretty!  Can you see me in the picture?

 

Paul was very proud of this shot since it also had the dew drop on the leaf...

 

This guy was just hanging out..

 The other night, we saw that someone drew the hanafuda card that had the deer and the momiji on a lantern!  Hello, that is perfect for this area!  I tried to replicate it in this photo...

One final shot of the park before we leave...

I think its neat that they even make their drains beautiful! 

Finally made our way back to the torii area.  Here's the temple/pagoda that we didn't have enough energy to go see. 

When we got back, it was low tide, so we decided to walk out to the torii like everyone else.

 

Now its time to eat!  We couldn't leave the area without trying more of the street food.  I wish I didn't eat so much breakfast... I'm sure I could've tried more things! 

 At first we weren't sold on the whole deep fried momiji, but we saw a video online by Only in Japan that features the Miyajima street food. You should check it out if you plan to go.  After watching the video, we thought the deep fried momiji looked like the age manju we usually get in Asakusa.  So we decided to give it a try.  Good thing we did!  It was so good when it was fresh!  We chose the custard one- it pretty much oozed out of the crust.

We decided to go back before we left to buy some to take home.  Here's the flavors they have.

 

Everyone sells that momiji, so in case you are wondering which one we went to.. its the one with this guy outside.  Cute yah?  I think he's supposed to be a deer.  And I think you are supposed to put your stick in the slot below when you are finished eating.

 

Ok, now this was not planned... I kept seeing everyone walking around eating these fishcake on a stick so I went to check it out.  They had all types of flavors and it smelled so good, that I broke down and got one.  We shared the potato bacon one and it was awesome! So awesome I'm going to try to figure out how to make it when I go home.  It might not be on a stick, but I'm thinking patties?

We were still pretty full, so after we went down the whole street, we decided on one more deep fried momiji, bought our omiyage, and headed back to the main island.  Thanks Miyajima!  We had a fun adventure!

Next, we headed back to Hiroshima Station.  Paul had read about a waterfall area off the beaten path that he wanted to check out.  Since we weren't sure we'd ever make it back here, we decided to make the trek up (another) the mountain to check it out.  Here's us halfway up the mountain.  I was hoping the bus would pick us up, but no such luck.

We finally made it!  I was so tired and sore by then.  Training at Imiloa did not help. I need to train more next time!

I love this photo Paul took of the pagoda.

I thought this was so cute.  The crafter in me liked that someone made little hats for each statue.  I think Paul told me the story about the guy who gave all the hats to the statutes cause he was cold and though they were probably cold too.  Cute yah?

That side trip really tired us out.  We were hungry by now and found the Little Mermaid bakery in the station, so we had a quick snack.

We also saw this Danish bar donut.  It was pretty good.

Oh, and I guess we didn't take a picture of the other thing I bought. I found a stand with those fishcake sticks, so I got one for the road, along with some musubis in case we get hungry.  I stayed up the entire trip for once, but look who fell asleep!

 Well, come to find out he was so tired because he's sick!  He's sleeping now, so I'm letting him rest today.  I might go check out Don K since its near the station while he sleeps.  Wish me luck!

Osaka Adventure: Day 3- Hiroshima and Miyajima

Greetings from Hiroshima! Actually, we are about to leave Hiroshima as I write this post, but the whole post will be about our trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima.

We started out the day by waking up super early (again).  Well, we did have 10 hours of sleep after all! LOL!  We got up before the sun and decided to try find 7-11.  Success!  We got more musubis and snacks for the trip.  When we got back to the room, we decided to eat that cheescake that we bought the night before.  We really should've eaten it fresh, but we were too full and tired to enjoy it.  It was still ono the next day!

After packing for our overnighter, we headed towards Osaka Station to get on the Shinkansen to Hiroshima.  The main thing we planned to do in Hiroshima was to check out the Peace Memorial Park.  It was pretty far from the station but we still walked the whole way!  On the way, we found a Tokyu Hands, so I grabbed some stuff that people were asking us for.

Finally we made it to the park!  The leaves were turning color already!

This is the children's peace memorial dedicated to Sakado Sasaki who folded cranes while she was sick from the bombing.

See the crane?  You can ring the bell by pulling on his cord.

You can read more about it here..

So, people who come to visit from all over the world fold cranes and bring them here to hang.  Now I wish we did that too!

This was my favorite one.  Its so cute!

Although it has a special message, seeing all the cranes made me a little sad.

So we ventured into the park to look at the fall foilage..

This building is the original dome that was right near where the bomb fell.  It still stands today,  Amazing!

The whole park was filled with trees turning color!

Behind us is the peace memorial in the park that was made to look like a shelter

Next, we headed towards the museum... It had a lot of interesting information...  This is what Hiroshima looked like before the bombing...

And this is what it looked like after...

Paul said these were the actual cranes folded by Sadako.

Towards the end of the exhibits, they showed a lot of graphic photos that I wasn't prepared to see.  I had to stop early because I started getting emotional and didn't want to cry at the museum.  When Paul was finished, we decided to leave for Miyajima.

So since we walked all the way to the park, we decided to try to look for food or catch the bus back to the station.  Since there was hardly any food places nearby we decided to catch the bus.... so lesson number one- we don't know how to catch the bus, so don't follow our instructions. LOL!  I think you are supposed to enter from the middle of the bus and grab a ticket. Then when you leave, you give the ticket to the driver with your exact fare.  Well, we were dumb and didn't get a ticket.. then we tried to pay with our train card.  He was nice and didn't get mad at us.  I'm sure he was shaking his head at us after we got off.

So since we were still hungry, we decided to look for food at Hiroshima Station.  We looked at the department store food but surprisingly didn't find anything that looked good.  So we decided to find a restaurant upstairs and decided on an Okonomiyaki restaurant.  You could order other items too, so we decided to get a grilled musubi and karaage chicken along with an okonomiyaki to share.  Here's my rice and chicken.  It was ono!

And here's my first Okonomiyaki!  It had noodles on the bottom then it seemed more like an egg than a pancake, cabbage, squid, and shrimp, topped with green onions.  I didn't think I'd really like it, but I was pleasantly surprised!  See my little spatula?  I feel like the girl from Ranma 1/2.

So we decided we really needed to try these cheese tarts.  There was a constant line around the building for them, so they must be good right?  We got one lemon and one regular.  I liked the lemon one the best!  It was really liquidy once you broke into it and the crust was a cookie- not like a pie.

After our dessert, we were ready to make our way to Miyajima.  Let me just say that the Hiroshima JR tracks are very confusing!  We ended up on the wrong platform 2xs and then again when we came back.  Then we saw other people getting lost too, so at least it wasn't only us.

We finally made it on the train!

The train ride is about 20 minutes from Hiroshima Station.  After you get out of the station, you need to go underground just to cross the street!  Then just go straight ahead and you will find the ferry to Miyajima Island.  The ferry comes regularly, so the wait wasn't that long.

Can you tell how cold I am?

Paul got this nice shot from the boat. We just made it for sunset!

And now for the best part!!!!  I got to see deer!!

You are not supposed to feed them... but they come up to you looking for food.  They aren't that pushy like the Nara deer.  Well, most of them are not.

Look!  I made friends!!

These two were on the beach.  Mommy and baby.

I think this was the Daddy.  He didn't go that far ahead of them- kept turning around to check on them. 

When we went to check out the famous torii gate, this guy came up to Paul and really wanted his bag.  I think he could smell the cheese tart that was in it.

He wanted it so much, he tore the bag!  They really like paper by the way... more on that later.

Here's that torii gate I was telling you about.  Its beautiful in the ocean.

After visiting the gate, we decided to try find our hotel and look for food.  While on our way, some of the shops were still open, so Paul got to try the fresh oysters.  He said it was really good.

Look how huge they are!

OK, can someone please explain what is up with this rice paddle?  And every store was selling them too.

We finally found our hotel located up the road from the street with all the shops.  It was called Live Max or something like that.  The hotel was nice! No shoes inside- you gotta leave them in lockers by the door.  Oh and if you want to eat dinner in their restaurant, you need to let them know by 3:00 that day.... yeah, we didn't know or do that, so we were dinnerless.  Luckily we had paid for free breakfast the next day, so at least we'll be able to eat that.

So we had to venture out to look for food.  Hmmmm... didn't realize what a challenge that would be!  It was only 6:00, but everything was pretty much closed on the island except one izakaya that was already packed. Geez, even Hilo food places stay open past 6:00!

No combini either... Hmmm...

 So we decided to take the ferry back to the main island and see if we could find something open there.  We found 7-11, so if worse came to worse, we could eat combini food.

A few doors down, we found an izakaya that served dinner, so we settled on there for dinner.  Phew!
Started off with two LARGE beers.

Paul had to help me finish mine.  Yes, I'm a lightweight.

Ok here's what we had at a glance...  Paul had chicken karaage set and I had the tonkatsu set.  It was good!

And for dessert, we went to 7-11 to grab some snacks.  Paul wanted this ice cream sandwhich. The outside is like a wafer cone that is super crunchy and fresh!

After we got back to the island, we headed back to our hotel.  See that deer?  He was being totally kalohe.  He was eating those signs on the board!  I was wondering why the deer was in the back roads away from the others!

We sure did a lot yesterday!  Wait till you see what we did today!!  More Miyajima Island and Hiroshima on tomorrow's post.  See you then!