Day 15

Day 15 was the much awaited bunny island visit!  After a morning of travelling we arrived at the island, which has recently undergone a bunch of changes.  Until just recently, this island wasn't really known to a lot of people.  But a video posted to youtube by a girl from Taiwan (I think) went viral and now there's a booming tourist industry to visit bunny island.

Bunny island used to be the location of a secret Japanese poison gas factory, and has a long and dark history with pollution and mistreatment of workers.  There was a museum and several peace memorials around the island, and you could also go and see the crumbling ruin of the factory.  It has not been preserved by the government, simply left as is.

(peace cranes)

After WWII the factory was destroyed and the story goes that the surviving lab bunnies were set free and started the now huge rabbit population.  However, our guide today told us that this was just a legend, and the original rabbits were set loose by a school group as a project.  The original 8 rabbits now number over 700!  So that meant there were rabbits everywhere, lounging around and enjoying the cool shade when they could.  Our tour guide gave us little baggies of fresh lettuce and carrots to feed them with, since they are so well fed they can be picky about what they take from tourists.  Without further ado, here are a bunch of pictures of cute bunnies

Once the bunnies were all full and done playing with us tourists we headed back and then on to our next destination.  We're staying the next day on Miyajima island, and spending the night tonight.  Since it was such a great night we decided to walk around and see the famous Tori gate when there weren't so many people.  We got there just in time to use the low tide to walk out and see it when it's fully revealed!  What a beautiful sight.

Also Miyajima has a resident deer population!  So there were more cute animals to pet!  The deer are small and don't care about people at all, so you could just pat them on the head as they walked past.  Very cute.

Tomorrow we explore Miyajima!