I went out to Tokusa, which is one of my high schools way up in the mountains. I kinda fell asleep in the car, and when I woke up, there was snow everywhere! It kind of looks like Narnia! It snowed all day, we got up to 17 inches in places. It was great to go out and wander around the streets, taking photos, but I was very grateful for the warm bus after!
The deer in Miyajima, love food, and sometimes you see a tourist feeding one, but generally it's a no no. But they are fed grain once a day, so I was lucky enough to get some, and convince them to come eat out of my hand! It was a little scary, they would easily knock into each other and me, but it was super cute too!
I love Momijimanju, they are basically cakes filled with some filling in the shape of a maple leaf. But I discovered that there are chocolate covered ones, normal ones, and deep fried ones! I must have eaten 3 of these in the day, because they are so darn good! They even have a cute mascot outside where you can put your trash when you are done! Kawaii ne?
The red torii in the water, is actually the gate to Itsukushima shrine, but people often forget this. I have never actually paid to go into the shrine, because near the exit you can stand and take some nice photos of the red walkways and pretty lanterns. It's quite a popular photo to take, and I really like it!
I messed around with the settings on my camera a bit and found the black and white one. The red gate is always THE RED ONE so I thought it might be interesting to take some detailed black and white photos of the gate. How, people rest rocks on the braces for good fortune, or leave money in the gaps for the Gods. It was really interesting to see how the wood had been affected by the water, day after day. And boy was it beautiful!
I love the big red gate, and I had said that I wanted to stay until sunset, because it usually is very beautiful here. However, the tide was out, so we decided to walk through the sand to go up to the gate. When the tide goes out for a few hours, you can walk right up to it! You can see from the pictures that there really aren't very many people there in winter, so I thought it was a great time to visit! It is so impressive and so tall..and quite...magical? Mystical maybe? But either way, it was nice to go down and get an entirely different perspective than normal..and it turns out that the tide came back in after we left...so we timed it perfectly!
Because we got to Miyajima so late in the afternoon, maybe about 3 o clock, the light was really pretty, and it was very empty actually. I had expected, for a weekday, to it to be very busy...but I guess not many people want to go out traipsing around in freezing January!I thought these lanterns were really pretty in the afternoon light, as well as looking back across the water to Hiroshima!
