Miyajima

We had an early start this morning to see the Peace Gardens in the light for photos and being able to read the plaques (when they weren’t only in Japanese). I can’t stress how impactful the whole place is, an amazing sentiment to those who lost their lives. Also there are a couple of the only trees that managed to survive the blast over 2 kilometres away, the rest were all destroyed, these have been relocated into the park and are actually growing once more. Very good to see it in the light after the past couple of days only seeing it after dark. Today we were headed over to Miyajima to see an infamous shrine and some other bits and pieces. This involved a bus to the train station, train to a place I can’t remember the name of and then a ferry to the island. Here we witnessed out first late mode of public transport. The ferry left at 10:16 rather than quarter past as promised. Outrageous. It still got us across on time though. There is a stark contrast between the ferries of the Philippines and Japan, I’m assuming you can guess which is the most efficient. 

On the ferry over we passed the infamous Itsukushima Shrine, which is a temple complex with a massive Torii gate positioned out in the sea. At high tide this appears to be floating, although at low tide it’s footing is revealed thus somewhat losing the magic. Fortunately high tide was at 11:45 today so we were perfectly timed to catch it. However the entire gate was covered in scaffolding and plastic so we literally couldn’t see any of it. At all. As it’s one of the most visited tourist spots in the entire of Japan we were quite looking forward to this. Very disappointing. 

Off the boat we still had a wander around the floating temple, as it was basically what we came here to see, and it was very nice (would have been better without the scaffolding). After this short perusal we headed onwards, along the seafront to the little Kiyomori shrine, then inland for a short, steep walk through Omoto Park and on to the Daishoin Temple which was actually very impressive. It’s a series of numerous shrines and temples ranging from single sculpted figures to very large prayer halls, and even an underground room with loads of lanterns covering the ceiling. It’s set into a forest on a hillside with many many steps between all the buildings. There was also hundreds of little sculptures, depicting all sorts of different people or gods (unsure), all with different poses presumably meaning different things. Many of these had offerings of money on or around them, so they clearly mean something. There was also a passage under the main temple entrance which was completely pitch black. I wandered into here, got intimidated, and walked straight back out. Very strange. 

By this time we were very hungry so we walked back into the town itself for some lunch. Despite walking the entire length of the main street, and taking a few detours down others, Amelia couldn’t find something that she wanted to eat, so didn’t. I, on the other hand, had a barbecued crab claw (long crab claw on a stick) and it was absolutely delicious. It’s a common street food we’ve seen all over the place. Definitely the best thing I’ve eaten here so far. 

From here we went to the Mount Misen ropeway, via a cable car, to which we were scooted up to near the summit of the mountain in 2 separate gondolas. There’s probably a pretty great view from the highest car, but it had started raining by then and was very cloudy/foggy so it wasn’t really the best. A short 20 minute hike up to the top revealed another potentially great view, obliterated by the clouds, but a very nice hike up some rocks with shrines and temples along the way. Amelia didn’t do this so she waited back in the gondola station. I don’t know why particularly. We had planned to hike down but Amelia didn’t fancy it, and we didn’t have enough cash to pay for two tickets, so Amelia very politely asked if we could pay at the bottom (as they had a card machine) to which, to my surprise, the chap brought out two laminated cards saying ‘payment on arrival’. Nobody checked these so you could definitely just get a free ride down, and in the UK that would probably be a common occurrence, but I guess the mentality here is just so much different. We duly paid when we arrive back on the ground like the honest citizens we are.

From here, with our list ticked off, we headed back to the port where Amelia finally ate a snickers and some Pringles, and got the boat and train back to Hiroshima. Here we picked our bags up (I forgot to mention we left out bags in a storage locker at the station so we didn’t have to go all the way back to the hotel and back when we were tired after a full day touristing), and got the Shinkansen train over to Kyoto. Again a very pleasant experience, the first train (we had a connection this time) was delightfully comfortable, with one seat where you could definitely fit two which reclined to a ridiculously low angle for sleeping. I just wish we were on that train longer.