Along came Sunday and 4 really tired people were driving to the island of Miyajima and the city of Hiroshima: Ayano, Nozomi, Shota and I. We got up at 7 a.m., took our rental car and started our tour – so there wasn’t much sleep, especially as Nozomi and I had been watching a movie until 3 in the night ^^
Our first stop was Miyajima, an island which is considered a sacred place in Japan and houses (among many other amazing buildings and locations) the Itsukushima shrine, one of the cultural world heritages. The huge red torii of the shrine is also a really famous sight and often used in guides and books about Japan. Besides sightseeing, we also tried local dishes, like the maple leave-shaped and deep-fried cakes with cream-filling, that are a known specialty at Miyajima. And of course, there were the deer. The guide map read as follows:
Attention:
The deer at Miyajima are wild. They may eat paper and clothes. Please pay attention and keep an eye on your personal belongings – especially tickets and souvenirs as the deer might eat them.
Luckily, no deer tried to eat our things, but we saw some of them eating paper tissues and other stuff from different tourists. They should have read the warning! You also weren’t allowed to touch or feed them at all, but seemingly neither tourists nor deer seemed to care about that.
After that tour, we went to Hiroshima with our car. After we had finally found our parking lot, it was already really dark, so the sightseeing was reduces to a visit of the Atomic Bomb Dome and the peace memorial park. In the darkness of the evening, these monuments had some kind of a warning and dangerous appearance – maybe this is how they should appear anyway to get their point across.
Before driving home, we decided to eat dinner in Hiroshima and what other meal could we have chosen, than the local specialty Okonomiyaki. So we went to Okono-mimura, where you can eat Okonomyaki on three floors and in a lot of different restaurants that are all in this building. The best thing was (apart from the cool taste!), that the meals were produced directly in front of you, not more than 30cm away – a really nice personal touch to the experience. And of course I was asked again where I came from and if I drank beer and played soccer… that’s what everyone knows about Germany anyways ^^
Now that I’m back in Okayama: here’s a selection of photos from that day. I hope I’ve at least one for all te described things. If not, you can complain and I will dig one up for you 
