We woke up bright and early so we could get an early start to Miyajima. We rode a ferry over to the island. Miyajima has the famous floating Torii. The shrine there is called Itsukushima. We wanted to get there early one to beat the crowds and two because we wanted to hike to the top of Mt. Misen. There are three routes to the top. Our friend Yuma told us to take the farthest route because it is less traveled which means less tourist. So we did and we only saw a few other people on the hike. It was a pretty strenuous hike. I tell ya they really like their stairs here. There were so many stairs! The stairs, in my opinion, made the hike harder. It was more like boulder climbing. We hiked to the peak of Komagabayashi and ate lunch there. At that point we debated if we wanted to hike further and go to the top of Mt Misen which is the higher, more populated, peak. After lunch and resting for about a half hour we decided to hike up. After about another 1000 stairs (not an exaggeration) we made it to the top of Mt. Misen. Both peaks were beautiful but the Mt. Misen definitely had more people. On the way down I decided to count stairs from the gate and I stopped after getting over 1200 stairs. It was only about half way down too! I know we climbed a few thousand stairs today. By the time we came down our legs were jello. Since we booked it up to the top we still hadn’t seen all the things in the town of Miyajima so we walked around town and bought some souvenirs and went to the shines in town. By the time we rode the ferry and the train back to our hotel we were exhausted. It’s the next morning now and my legs are really sore. I guess all the walking and stair climbing we’ve done on this trip was preparing us for this one day. I would be happy if I didn’t see another stair the rest of the time we were here.