My First Trip to Japan! #3: Cityhopping with a JR pass

As you know, we left Okinawa to go to Fukuoka.
Bye, beautiful blue sea! I'll miss Okinawa and I'll definitely have to go back there some day!
On our way to Kyūshu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, we had a beautiful view.

We checked into our hotel and met a friend of mine. We had gyūdon (cooked beef and onion on rice) at Yoshinoya for lunch.

My friend took us for a walk in the underground shopping arcades of Tenjin! Really interesting and beautifully made.
In the evening, we enjoyed some melonpan (fluffy sweet bread with sugar cookie dough on top) with a nice hot drink before we decided to rest.

On the next day, we took the Shinkansen to Kagoshima. The island is far in the south of Kyūshu and very nice, with a blue sea and palm trees.
And... an active volcano!

It wasn't very active when we were there, though.
We took a ferry to Sakurajima  (the name of the volcano's island) and made a trip about halfway up the crater. We were too exhausted to walk up to the top (an additional 3km one way).

We stayed at a guest house that night and were lucky to be close to the station, because our train for our next stop, Hiroshima, departed quite early in the morning.

In Hiroshima, we were met by a really nice man I know from work. He works for the tourist office so he knows his way around, and he was so nice as to lead us through the museum and the peace park, showed us the atomic bomb dome and the other memorials.
He even prepared for our trip to Miyajima, making boat reservations and getting us some lunch boxes! Such a nicely planned day, and for the island itself his lovely colleague gave him a map for me, where she marked a route and some nice shops for us <3

So we went to the Island by boat, walking toward the shrine. The tide was low, so we went to the Torii standing in the sea, the iconic picture that you see so often on promotional posters for Japan.

After looking at the shrine and playing with the cute deer, we bought some super cute momiji manjū, small cakes shaped like maple leaves with different fillings, which are unique to Miyajima.

And lookie what we found!

In the evening, we picked up our baggage and went to Kyoto... our "home base" for the next couple of days. It's colder here, but we are looking forward to some exciting new days!