Golden Week - Miyajima.

On Thursday we took the local train and the ferry to Miyajima. Miyajima is an incredible island off of Hiroshima famous for Itsukushima Shrine and its floating torii gate. Deer walk freely around the island (which, being from Michigan, the deer hunting capital of the world, was so weird for me to see). After we walked around and took photos for a while, we took the ropeway up to the top of Mt. Misen, the highest point on the island. Apparently you can see monkeys there, but we had just caught the last trip up to the top and we only had about ten minutes to look around, so we didn't see any. But the view was amazing - even without the monkeys.
Miyajima is one of the most beautiful places I've seen and my favorite place in Japan so far.

Maybe it was good we didn't see any monkeys - one of these signs says, "We do not like to be stared at in our eyes. If you do so, we will not be responsible for what will happen." Yikes!