We had planned for a post-Hiroshima de-stress on the nearby island of Miyajima, famed for its floating tori gates and its ancient history of peace and holiness, not to mention creepy eugenics - no sick or disabled people were allowed to be on the island, and you had to get kicked off if you became either...oh, and women couldn't set foot on the land, either.
Nowadays, its a big tourist site, mostly for the Japanese...the train and ferry ride out there is a little cumbersome to deal with, but not for us holders of the JR pass!
Actually, the tourism bureau is well aware of JR pass holders, especially as regards to the island's native deer population's predilection for eating them. A warning sign *specifically* cautioned you to not let the deer eat your JR pass. We wanted to test this odd- sounding warning first hand, Mythbusters-style, so the moment we arrived I asked the lady at the ferry terminal where we could find the deer.
Now, I had forgotten the word for "deer" in Japanese, and, as mentioned last post, we had lost my dictionary somewhere in the peace park, so I went with "shishi-gami," which is the name of the Deer God from the anime "Princess Mononoke." What I asked was probably something to the effect of, "Excuse me, but where might I find the divine deer spirits?"
The woman blinked, sighed, and said with the closest thing to an eye roll I've seen in Japan, "everywhere."
Indeed, the deer were quite ubiquitous, wandering here and there but mostly just finding shady spots to veg out in. They tended to congregate most often around the most photogenic landmarks, probably having long ago learned that that was where humans tended to visit, and where there were humans, there would be food.
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Approaching one of the deer, Josh took out his JR pass and waved it about...and sure enough, the deer made a lunge for it. The contest of reflexes was actually much closer than we had expected.
Still, no deer related mishaps occured (although one did sneak-attack me for my bag later down the line), and we explored 1500 year old temples in what felt like 1500 degree heat.
Bad horse's Japanese counterpart! Josh even composed a theme song for him:
"Bad-u horse, bad-u horse, he rides across the nation, like the East wind, disrespecting your ancestors...please understand, we are not implying that the wind would disrespect your ancestors, many apologies...bad-u horse!"
Only when we perused our photos later did we realized how sweat-soaked and delerious we looked in all of them, likely fulfilling everyone's nightmare image of two giant, sweaty Gaijin gorillas thundering about precious historical sites, teasing the divine deer spirits.
After a long and fruitless search for ATMs that gave us an unasked for tour of, well, pretty mcuh everywhere, we hopped back aboard the Shinkansen, transfered in Osaka, and boarded the "Hikari Super Express" for Tokyo...which didn't feel all that express, stopping at least 8 times along the way.
"Clearly," said Josh, "'Hikari' means 'irony' in Japanese."
- D
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