Day 3 - Miyajima

Day 3 - Monday 30th September 2919

Up and out early today, before 7.30. We got an 8am train using our rail passes and had a 30 minute journey to Miyajima station. Then it was a 10 minute ferry to Miyajima island, passing lots of planks of wood floating in the ocean. We later found out that they were for growing oysters on the underside. Hiroshima and the surrounding area are famous for their oysters.

We had arrived early so that the Ohtorii gate (a red gateway) would appear to be floating at high tide. It lives on a bed of mud and you can walk up to it at lowtide, but at high tide it 'floats'. Only, today it was a huge pile of scaffolding 'floating' on the water. Renovations. Oh well.

The rest of Miyajima is fabulous. Its like a seaside town with lots of shops and temples. We went into the Itsukushimajinja shrine, which also 'floats'. Its a huge wooden platform with covered walkways and statues of lions everywhere. There is also the 5 story Hokoku pagoda, which is bright red, but you can't go up it. We did look in the treasure room, which had samurai swords and samurai clothing. There was even a model of the Ohtorii gate being constructed and therefore covered in very old-fashioned scaffolding!

Lots of wild deer roam around the town and mountains and are very bold about making friends with tourists or wandering into shops.

It was still early, and getting very humid, so we decided to get the cable car up to mount Misen. It is supposedly a miracle site, and has a flame that had been burning for 1200 years. The flame lit the one now standing outside the peace museum in Hiroshima.

The cable car was great and the views were spectacular over the other islands and the sea of maple trees below us. A couple of leaves had turned bright red, but we are a few months to early for the autumn leaf show. You could see tiny beaches in amongst the greenery. Very beautiful.

After the cable car was a funicular cable car that took you the last stretch to the viewing platform. We weren't at the top though, so decided to do the 1km hike to the top. You trek downhill for a third of it and then up, very steeply. It was very hard work in the humid air. Dotted along the lush green hiking paths were temples and shrines full of little stone human shaped statues, all wearing an assortment of hats and sunglasses. I'm not sure if this was significant or if they were just abandoned or forgotten hats. One statue holding a book had reading glasses on! Very cute.

We made it to the top of the mountain drenched in sweat, but feeling accomplished. The views were incredible, if a bit hazy. The trek back was much easier. There were so many people heading up the mountain as we came down at noon. I'm so glad we got up early and had the place pretty much to ourselves.

At the bottom we headed for lunch and ended up having lots of small snacks. We had deep fried fish and potato cakes, with cold tea that had an aftertaste of coffee, fried spiralled potato's, fried asparagus fish cakes wrapped in bacon, katsu curry oyster filled bread, fried maple shaped chocolate filled pastries and custard filled maple shaped sponge cakes. All washed down with Hiroshima grown lemon soda for me and lemon beer for Matt. The food street was great. Filled with domany interesting food stalls and touristy shops, and deer of course! What a great morning.

When we arrived back in Hiroshima we headed straight for the Peace Museum, something we felt we had to do when visiting this area. It was just as awful as we had imagined it would be. I learnt a lot and the information was presented in quite a matter-of-fact, almost emotionless way. It only took an hour to get around it, so I felt it wasn't overdone to the point where you couldn't take any more. It had one section where individual, named children's stories were told, next to an actual item of clothing or possession they had on them that fateful day. That bit was particularly difficult to see. But it was all done very tastefully.

Still, we needed a huge ice cream afterwards to cheer us up, as we looked at the tree that had flowered the following year after the bomb, a fitting metaphor for how life goes on no matter what.

We were pretty knackared by this point and my foot was causing some trouble, after a mistep trekking the mountain earlier. We headed back to the hotel to freshen up, then went in search of a bar to watch the rugby and eat. We found 'Jennys', a bit of a dive, but with surprisingly good pizzas and burgers. Samoa vs Scotland was on the big screen. We were the first people in there, but it soon filled up with rugby fans.