When You Wander

In my last post, I gave my impressions of Hiroshima. Visiting Hiroshima was actually day two of a 2-day trip to the region. Our first day of exploration was reserved for Miyajima Island!

Since the bullet train only goes to Hiroshima, we first found our hotel so we could store our bags while we were out for the day.

To get to Miyajima Island from Hiroshima is fairly easy. From our hotel, we took a 10-minute taxi, followed by a 20-minute train ride, which led us to the Miyajima Ferry Port. We got in line for the next ferry and were off!

The half hour boat ride to the island was great. The sky was clear; the weather was crisp and breezy! We were able to get our first glimpses of the island and take in Hiroshima from a distance.

My day trip to Miyajima Island went like this, in a nutshell: deer, okonomiyaki, momiji manju, the Great Torii, the Mt. Misen summit, and an epic sunset. Let me explain.

Deer greeted us.

Miyajima was Nick’s first time encountering wild deer in Japan. Basically, if you dare to carry a plastic bag, be prepared for battle. The deer are smart enough to know that there are likely goodies inside, and they WILL approach you with confidence.

Like the deer I met in Nara, the deer of Miyajima Island were a bit feisty. (To read more about my experience with deer in Nara, check out my post Nara: My First Day Trip!). Unlike the deer in Nara who are incredibly well fed, I can’t say the same for the Miyajima deer. There are many articles pointing to the idea that the deer in Miyajima are actually starving. In Nara, there are vendors on every corner selling deer “cookies,” while in Miyajima, as of 2008, it’s actually forbidden to feed them. Now I’m no deer mindreader, but I imagine this is why they rebelliously act out and end up eating plastic bags and paper products. The city (Haitsukaishi) is hoping the deer will return to their prior wildlife atmosphere and hunting ways. However, it doesn’t seem like the deer understand how to fend for themselves away from the city, now that they’ve become accustomed to it for so long. I hope a solution can be found. The deer really are quite cute, and frankly, deserve to have something nutritious to eat, aka not trash, as the main source of their diet.

Okonomiyaki and Momiji Manjyu filled us.

Okonomiyaki is a popular dish throughout Japan. This particular region of Japan, however, does the dish quite differently. Usually, your basic okonomiyaki consists of lots of flour, yams, cabbage, maybe egg, and then whatever  protein your heart desires. In the Hiroshima/Miyajima region, much less flour is used and I’m not even sure if yams are used at all. Instead of these being the main ingredients, they use lots and lots of cabbage, followed by veggies and protein to your liking. It’s also very popular to add udon noodles to your okonomiyaki. Nick and I found a tiny, local place that was recommended on TripAdvisor and weren’t disappointed! If only we had taken pictures before we wolfed it all down. 

On the way to the okonomiyaki place, we randomly found the world’s largest rice spoon. Who knew?

After lunch, our sweet tooth kicked in and we knew just what we wanted. Momiji Manju is a delicious, maple leaf-shaped, cake dessert with a sweet filling inside. The filling is usually either traditional red bean, custard, chocolate, cream cheese, or matcha, but we also stumbled upon many other specialty flavors like grape, peach, lemon, sweet potato, apple, and the list goes on! One momiji manju is about the size of the palm of your hand. Needless to say, we tried SEVERAL flavors, but our favorite was when we found a street vendor who had just made a hot, fresh batch of apple momiji manju… mmmm. Imagine warm apple pie filling stuffed inside moist cake! 

The Great Torii amazed us.

What can I say. We were lucky enough to see the Great Torii during both low and high tides. Both visions were beautiful in their own way. During low tide, we were able to walk right up and witness the history of the gate in detail.

Workers were actually in the process of removing mud and shells that had suctioned onto the gate legs over time. You can see the gray construction tent in the background above.

The Great Torii was lovely on it’s own, but the fact that it was an absolutely perfect day definitely didn’t hurt the experience. 😉

I particularly LOVED photographing the water. There was this glow about it. Where we were standing was shallow, so you could see the brown and green colors from the sand and plants peaking through from under the ice blue water. Then, as you looked further out, you could also see where the water deepened. The colors mixed beautifully, making for such a picturesque sight. Add in the mountains in the background… forrrrrgetaboutit.

Behind the Great Torii is the Itsukushima Shrine. The shrine also “floats” during high tide.

I could have left Miyajima satisfied after these amazing views, but the island had more to offer. As we began to depart for the ferry, we had to pass by the Great Torii once more, and were excited to see that high tide had rolled in!

The Mt. Misen summit tested us.

After seeing the Great Torii during low tide, we decided to make our way up to Mt. Misen. We knew there was a cable car that would take us to the almost top, and from there we could decide if we would walk the 30 minutes to the summit.

In all honesty, we were not planning on hiking up to the summit. We weren’t dressed in the appropriate clothes or shoes! But once the cable car dropped us off, we figured we might as well give the hike a shot. Considering I was wearing $10 flats from H&M and could feel the shape of every rock under my feet, it wasn’t all that bad! (Although I had a pretty great travel buddy to keep me entertained).

Definitely worth the effort, ’cause I’m all about the views.

The ferry sunset stunned us with its beauty.

I had heard that the Great Torii and shrine illuminated when it got dark. I wanted to see this, but also didn’t want to get back to Hiroshima too late, either. I took a risk and decided we’d leave Miyajima around 5:45, which was about when my phone said it’d get dark. The bad news was that we didn’t get to see the Great Torii all lit up. The great news was that we did get extremely lucky with capturing some of the most stunning sunset photographs I’ve ever taken. I had a hard time narrowing down my favorites, so here are the top five, in my opinion. 🙂

And that concludes our day trip to Miyajima Island, as well as this post. Thanks for reading!