Miyajima, Japan. The last ferry had left for the mainland. I had missed it on purpose. The place was just too beautiful to leave, and I wanted to spend the night on the island. Except for a few monks in the monastery, I was probably the only person staying in Miyajima that night. I found myself a park bench to sleep on with view of the large tori, a vermilion coloured wooden gate that is built into the sea.
When I woke up – like always when sleeping outside you wake up just before sunrise when it is coldest – I saw the silhouettes of deer standing around me. Calm and relaxed creatures. From the nearby monastery the sonorous humming of the morning prayer began. Deep and evenly sounds. I looked at the tori’s balanced proportions, its symmetry of elements, and the reflections of it in the water. I waited for the sun to rise and the mist over the water to vanish, and then I rolled up my sleeping bag and took the ferry back from this paradisiacal spot to the mainland, to a nearby city that was once the most hellish place on earth. Hiroshima.