Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyajima
Miyajima Island is a nifty little island that you have to take a ferry out to see, with a torii in the water and a shrine and deer and monkeys on the island (you have to take a cable car way up to the area where the monkeys are).
The area is famous for its maple trees, so the pastries on the island are shaped
like maple trees and there are maple emblems everywhere (of course the green
ones everywhere look like pot leaves, which gives you a start, especially with
Buddha statues smiling so serenely from every corner).
They had a soft maple leaf keychain with a fake bite out of it that if you
squeezed it, bulged with pretend maple filling. (Anyone who knows my brother
will remember the little German figurine he gave my mother which, if you
squeezed its stomach, would bulge with pretend boogers -- this is of course what
this keychain reminded me of at once.)
The city is lined with streets leading to the pagoda and some Shinto shrines,
and several souvenir stores, many street vendors selling food on sticks (think
of Chinese shrimp toast but much bigger/longer and on a stick), and restaurants
that display plastic replicas of all the food you can choose from inside the
restaurant with all their prices shown as well.
The cable car system actually had two stages, so just when you thought you'd
gotten to the monkey level, you had to get on another one...they were really
high up there, but it was worth the trip, because they scrambled right across
the paths in front of you (quick little dudes -- faster than you could raise
your camera to click your shutter).
Japanese reality check: they have a completely different approach to trash
and recycling. They don't want to waste any paper, so there are never any paper
towels in the rest rooms. You might luck out with one of those air dryers, but
you will never have any paper towels. There's also never a trash can around
because all the trash is sorted (plastic, aluminum cans, etc.) so you can't just
gather up your trash when you get out of your car or whatever, thinking you can
discard it on your way to wherever you're going. There won't be a trash
receptacle outside any random store; it's actually pretty complicated getting
rid of your trash. And any trip to a rest room is a question mark: will there be
a western style toilet? And will there be any paper in there? Everybody walks
out of the bathroom shaking their wet hands. (Ick...but at least that means
they've washed them in the sink.)
