Kira Part 3

Monday June 16 we ventured North from Iwakuni to "Bunny Island" (Okunoshima). And when I say "ventured," I mean it was truly an adventure. 

We woke up at 6am and left the house around 8. We got to the ferry port at 1pm.Yeah, traveling with an infant is slow going.

First we had to pick up the rental car and transfer our stuff. Then Violet had a blowout and we had to go back home to get more wipes before we could get on the road. 

We were finally on the road and made some progress but before long, Violet got hungry and since Kira couldn't drive, we had to stop and break for lunch. It was no matter, we found some AMAZING pastries at the roadside stop. 

We got back on the road and enjoyed our pastries. Maybe a little too much because then we missed our exit. By like 30 minutes. When you miss your exit on a Japanese expressway you most likely have to drive at least another 30 minutes before the next exit, pay the toll fee, get back on the expressway, and drive back to your proper exit. Which is what we had to do. I was frustrated at this point and losing patience. Grr! I hate making mistakes while driving.

Finally we made it to our proper exit, and successfully navigated the rest of the way to the ferry port, found free parking (woohoo!), and waited ~15 minutes for the next ferry. 

When we FINALLY got to the island we made the happy conclusion that it was all worth it. 

The bunnies were ADORABLE!!! They were everywhere and wanted to eat all the vegetables right from your hand. And the weather was beautiful, which helped.

 

These natural shade structures are one of my favorite Japanese things!

I think Hayao Miyazaki must have come here and found his inspiration for totoros!

The island housed poisonous gas factories during both World Wars. This is one of the abandoned factories.  

Tuesday was a very rainy day. We hoped maybe it would clear up in the afternoon though so we packed our raincoats, forgot the umbrellas (oops), and headed west from Iwakuni to Tsuano. Even with no missed exits it was a long drive.
Once we got there we realized how nice it would have been to have umbrellas. Crap. Well, we found some tasty Korean food for lunch, fed the koi, walked through the town and browsed a few shops, got thoroughly wet and about 3 hours later had had enough of that sleepy town.

Wednesday we got back on the expressway and headed south to the Akioshido cave. We were quickly running out of enthusiasm for these long drives. The cave was beautiful but the drive was too long.

At the end of the cave there was a very psychedelic pictorial time line from the big bang to present day. It was thoroughly weird. And there was some trick-art along the way. lawlz

 

We celebrated a day of no driving by going for a run/walk through the Iwakuni lotus fields.

That weekend we went on a tour from the agency on base (ITT) to go cherry picking and go to a winery.

The cherry picking was awesome.

 It was all-you-can-eat cherries for 1 hour. SOO yummy! Different trees had different varieties of cherries with entirely different flavors. Some were sweet and others were sour.

 Then we went to the winery for a tour and sampling. A total dud. It was a self-guided tour through their cellar which had everything labeled in Japanese and all the wines available for sampling were way too sickly sweet (although we had just stuffed ourselves with cherries so maybe our palettes weren't clean enough).

To make up for it though there was an AWESOME playground. Sorry, I guess I didn't take any pictures though. I was too busy having fun apparently.

 The next day we took Kira to the Chicken Shack for the Chicken Shack Experience.

 We had saved the best for last and on Kira's last full day we went to Miyajima.

Up first, we made our own momiji-manju!

Even with instructions entirely in Japanese they turned out delicious!

 And that wrapped up Kira's trip. It was hard to say goodbye but it was made easier knowing I would see her again in just over a month when we traveled back to the USA for our own visit!