A return visit without the lengthy ramble around the Nature Walk would probably allow us to get around the Seven Wonders of Misen, including the Eternal Fire (Kiezu-no Reikado) is said to have been burning for over 1,160 years, and is believed to be effective to cure all illness. It was used to light the Flame of Peace in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
As stated before, Madam was keen to go the extra forty minutes or so that would have taken us around the summit, but given the state of both pairs of legs she decided to give that a miss. After a photo session around the observatory at the rope way station we made our way back down, well and truly in time to catch Itsukushima at close to the best tidal conditions.
We didn't, however, get there in a hurry. The way up had taken us through Momijidani Park, by all accounts one of Japan’s loveliest fall scenes with a striking contrast as the red of the Japanese maples shows up against the deep green of the surrounding evergreen forest. We'd been intent on getting to the base station on the way up, but on the descent, with the urgency out of the equation, I dawdled as Madam took her time snapping away.
Back at the main shrine we found ourselves sharing the space with a number of school groups, and a throng of mainly Japanese visitors, and we're mildly bemused by the reaction to the No Photographs sign where you pay your admission. Not five metres from that point there were a bunch of high school boys blithely ignoring the message, but a glance further on revealed the flouting of apparent instructions wasn't a generational thing.
Everyone else was doing it, so we did it too, figuring that the No Photographs bit applied to the people in the ticket booths (well, they were about the only thing that wasn't being photographed) and deciding to limit my shots to ones showing the torii, and the general shape of the building, avoiding anything that might be considered sacred. It seemed like a fairly common sense compromise.
From there, we could have continued around the bay to further temples and other points of interest, but by this stage the feet were aching, the muscles at the back of the legs were indicating that thy'd had enough and the crowds were getting to me, so when Madam suggested we head back to the mainland and move on to Hiroshima there weren't going to be too many objections.
We'd been on one of the earlier ferries in the morning, and with three separate services operating from Miyajima Port and a fourth bringing passengers from Hiroshima the flow of visitors had probably continues unabated through the day. By mid-afternoon, many of the visitors were thinking of heading in the other direction, so the ferries making the return trip were always going to be crowded.
I realized, as we stood at the end of a lengthy queue and watched another flow of incoming visitors leaving the vessel we were about to board, and another carrying a considerable contingent coming in to dock, that the flood of visitors might rise and fall through the day, but from the first service in the morning until the last one in the evening there's a steady stream coming in. People arriving towards the end are presumably booked in to one of the ryokans or onsens on the island, and are presumably there for the sunset.