Our trip to Miyajima

In order to try and clean-up the Wagoner traveling family name (What?  You went to a mall instead of the Atomic Bomb Dome?) I am going to finally get around to posting about our Miyajima trip that we took last month.

The elementary school had the day off and we went with a friend of mine (more about her later, but here's a teaser....she's from Iowa and a CPA!), her Dad, who was visiting, one of her daughters who is a year older than Olivia

Julia and Olivia  ☺

and a friend of Audrey's from school. 

Audrey and Macy ☺

 It was our first train ride as a family and we were pretty excited!

LOVE how she's crossing her legs here.  Who would think that my Tomboy Claire can be so prissy at times?  ☺

Gigi was such a cuddlebug all day.  I think she was in the sling the entire time!  ☺

Miyajima  is an island, so once we disembarked from the train, we trotted down the street and climbed aboard the ferry where we parked our stroller

The girls were in awe that the boat could hold cars, but alas, no cars came aboard.

and posed for some pictures....

My girls doing "Hook 'em Horns" and sweet Julia telling us she loves us.  ☺

and saw the Floating Torii for the first time. 

This is one of "three famous views of Japan".  We're so lucky to live near it!

Another thing that Miyajima is known for is the tame/wild deer which freely roam about the island. We were quite taken with the deer!!!!

Sorry I couldn't get the deer to pose head first.  This was the only picture I got with the five girls!  ☺

You know that in America there would have been vending machines where you could have purchased deer feed for a quarter.  I kept looking around for something like that!  ☺

The deer made up for the lack of deer feed machines by eating whatever they could.  Here's one following Mr. John around.  It chewed on his bag that was holding some souvenirs.

We didn't use the stroller for much but holding our stuff, but oh how I love strollers for that purpose!  I'll miss them when we outgrow them someday! 

Here's my favorite deer picture. 

A baby and her Mommy and a baby and her Mommy.  ☺

We sauntered down the shopping area with our most important stop being the pedicure fish store.  Yes, we paid money (500 yen perhaps?) to stick our feet in water and have fish eat the dead skin off of our feet.

One of Audrey's buddies had gone to Miyajima in August and told us about this and the girls were psyched!

But it was downright scary and creepy putting your feet in for the first time!

It took us a few minutes to work up the nerve!

But when you did...it wasn't bad....as long as you didn't look down!!!!!!!

I LOVE Audrey's smiling laugh in this one! 

Seriously....don't look down!

After a few minutes, Mick decided that it was just dangerous enough to be manly so he put his 500 yen in the pot.

Olivia and Julia were the only ones who couldn't work up the nerve, so Audrey and Macy took their minutes since we already paid.  :0

Then we dried off our feet and continued our walk toward the Torii, but first stopped at the world's largest rice paddle. 

What exactly is a rice paddle used for?  Anyone?

 Then we stopped in a store and there was this beautiful garden oasis in back.  Claire saw the big koi and said, "Mommy!  You could stick your toe in there and have the fish eat it!" 

Here's my favorite picture of me and my little Gigi right now.  

And speaking of the little blonde rock star.....we were told that Japanese people would be in awe of our little blondies and want to touch their heads for good luck, but in Iwakuni....us Westerners are a bit more common place.  But in Miyajima, there were crowds of school kids who would just go GAGA over Gigi.  It was hysterical!

There's the only picture I have of my new BFF, Kathy Goode.  I love her with a capital L-O-V-E!

We finally made it to the Torii and the big girls promptly ran down the hill and started for it.  Fun that we were there when the tide was out!

Claire was tired and I think this is a precious picture.  You can also see the big girls to the right of Mick and Claire. 

They made it and touched it.  

Gigi wasn't as in awe of the Torii as the rest of us. 

A sweet little nap.  :)

By then we were starving, but didn't want to sit down because we needed to get home to get Macy to soccer practice (her team was beginning playoffs and they ended up winning!  Go Macy!).  We had seen this stand and bought ourselves some.  Mick bought one that had the word bacon in it and I bought one that had the word lotus in it.  Luckily we just bought the girls a chicken stick because we walked around the corner of our stand (this picture is of another, more clear of what you're buying, stand) and saw that they were fish cakes. 

It reminded me a bit of the Saturday Night Live skit where Chevy Chase put a trout in the blender and drank it.  ☺  But as I told Olivia, it turns out....we're in Japan.  There's going to be Japanese food here. 

So we then did some obligatory tourist shots. 

And met these nice people along the walkway. 

I should really send this to Golden City Gymnastics, the girls' old gymnastics place.

Posed by the other Torii on our way out. 

Actually, this was on the way in.

So it was a WONDERFUL time in Miyajima and there's still so much to do there that we didn't try and accomplish (Yay for discretion!) everything.  There's hiking to do, a great view from the top and a temple (shhhhhhhh!!!!!!) to walk through and be very, very quiet in.  (Can you imagine Claire there?)

Come visit us and we'll go with you!!!!!!!