Playing with Deer and Senjokaku

 The very first thing we did upon arrival was to find some of the island's deer.  It didn't take us long to find some.  It seemed as if they were waiting for us.

The deer on the island are wild, but are very used to people and will tolerate being touched and petted.

I wondered how the deer would react to a swarm of children....but they didn't seem to care.

It was so fun to just walk right up to a deer and pet it!

 

An adult and a baby.  They don't get very big.

We slowly made our way toward Senjokaku, all the while there were deer everywhere and we kept getting distracted by them!

The deer kept walking away while we had the timer set on the camera, so we had a hard time getting a family picture with a deer in it.  This is the only one we were able to get!

Getting closer to the red torii in the water.

The view of Hiroshima from Miyajima beach.  The low clouds in the air made visibility kind of hard.

We saw these samurai armor on the sidewalk.  For quite a lot of money, you could rent a costume and walk around the island and live out your dream of being a samurai warrior.

The entrance into the tourist shops.

The torii gate on land.

One of the things we were looking forward to was being able to come here on Friday night and walk along this coast while these lanterns were lit up.  Because we didn't make it to the ferry on time, we had to look at these lanterns from across the bay while Raymond and the boys looked for hotel rooms.  It wasn't the same as if we had been able to be here.

The deer attacked Kirstin and the bag on the stroller that contained her bottle and the kids' snacks.  They were fast and got inside the bag quickly!  We had to watch them closely, but they didn't get anything.  Kirstin thought the deer were fun and didn't get scared when they stuck their head close to her face.

All Shinto shrines have a torii gate through which the gods housed within are to be approached, but the gate to Itsukushima is something special! The huge vermillion gate "floating" on the water is an iconic image that has been front and center of many pictures of Japan and was chosen by a 15th century scholar as one of the "three great scenic views of Japan".  At low tide--around 3:30 p.m.--, one can go out and walk around the infamous gate.  We had hoped to be able to be here at low tide, but unfortunately, because of our changed plans yesterday, we missed being able to touch it.

In the distance, we could see Itsukushima Shrine.

We made our way over to Senjokaku, still finding deer everywhere we looked.

Right next to Senjokaku, there is a five-storied pagoda.

The kids climbing the stairs up.....

 Senjokaku, the one thousand mat pavillion, stands in stark contrast to the brightly colored pagoda standing right next to it. Senjokaku was commissioned in the 1580s by the second of Japan's great unifying warlords, Hideyoshi Toyotomi. The warlord died before the building was completed and it remains unfinished and unpainted to this day.  It would have been interesting to go inside and see the huge beams that make up the building, but we had to pay to get in and we are very burned out of paying for every little thing we want to see after being in Kyoto for six days.  Instead, we walked around it.

 

 

The mountains here are covered with forest and are quite pretty, and the clouds made the island seem more mysterious. 

There was a pagoda across the canyon.  It was small and cute.

 

On to Itsukushima Shrine!