Going ape in Miyajima

Today we had a day trip to Miyajima, an island about 20km away from
Hiroshima. In Miyajima we stopped for a bite to eat and got this
picture of two young ladies enjoying some slush puppies. I don't know if
they managed to finish them but I'm sure they got an icecream headache.

We then tackled Mt. Misen (530m), the highest point on the island.
Conditions today were slightly damp and required some additional
technical equipment, not commonly seen on the Scottish hills. On top
were some big lunar rocks, whilst the path down had suffered some
typhoon damage.

Feeling lazy, we descended via the cable car station, or ropeway as they
are known here. The ropeway station had a number of friends as you can
see in the video - our first time where we were lucky enough to see
them. The baby was 8 weeks old. Other wildlife today included some fresh
water crabs and lots of tame deer.

Miyajima is most famous for its floating torii gate (which doesn't actually float and sits of piles driven into the sea bed). It's always good to get a picture of the gate in sunshine and at high tide. I think you'll agree we succeeded at neither - it was getting cold (below 20degrees) and the ferry home was ready to leave the island.

NB: We may be away from the internet for a couple of days as we're off
to Aso, home to the world's largest caldera. A caldera is formed when a
volcano empties all its lava and collapses in on itself. Stay tuned for
further news.