Draggle’s Asian Journey Part VI: Miyajima

After Kagoshima, the next stop was Miyajima. This stop in the trip was, I will admit, inspired by my Narutaru fandom. We took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima (it was quite a pleasant and scenic ride!), then took another train for twenty minutes to the town across from Miyajima. Then it was lunchtime!

eel

Yum yum, eel! Apparently it was recently added to some sort of protected species list, and my cousin was telling me we shouldn’t eat it. Oops. Well, it was good.

ferry

miyajima_torii

torii_water

Next was a short ferry ride to the island itself. We saw the temple as we crossed the bay.

miyajima_deer_2

miyajima_deer_stairs

Miyajima was filled with deer, which had no fear whatsoever of people. You could literally pet them and they wouldn’t care.

hotel_miyajima

We walked a mile to the ryokan we were staying in. We had a traditional (I guess?) room. The people at the hotel drove us back to the main town. They were ridiculously polite. They put our shoes in cubbies and gave us slippers to wear. But despite how ridiculously polite they were, they made fun of my shoes which had holes in them. Then I decided to buy new shoes when I came back…

miyajima_temple

miyajima_pagoda

miyajima_temple_2

There were a bunch of cool things in town. But we rushed to take the cable car up to the top of the mountain because it was closing soon.

miyajima_cable_1

miyajima_cable_2

miyajima_cable_3

It was an amazing view. Unfortunately we only had fifteen minutes until the last trip down the mountain, so we didn’t get to see the temples and trails up there. But it was still worth it.

miyajima_okonomiyaki

We went back down, and had dinner. It was my first time trying okonomiyaki. It was really good. But I would soon have much better okonomiyaki. I will tell you more about the wonder that is okonomiyaki when we get to Hiroshima. But in short, it is my favorite Japanese food and I can’t believe I never had it before.

miyajima_sunset

We walked around town some more, saw the sunset (and more deer).

miyajima_torii_dry

miyajima_torii_close

It was low tide now, so we were able to walk out to the torii. Pretty cool.

miyajima_rice_scoop

We saw the world’s largest rice scoop.

miyajima_futons

When we got back to the hotel, they had set out futons for us. My friend went to the public bath. I decided not to. Apparently significant breaches of social etiquette occurred in the public bath.

miyajima_breakfast

The next morning, this lady at the hotel prepared this ridiculous breakfast for us. It was as delicious as it looks.

They drove us to town and we took the ferry, headed for Hiroshima.

If you travel to Japan, I highly recommend a stop in Miyajima. I wish we’d stayed there longer.

6 thoughts on “Draggle’s Asian Journey Part VI: Miyajima

  1. Yeah i didn’t get to go to the top, but there are some nice views on the trail though near the creek. Yeah i had okonomiyaki there too, but I didn’t enjoy it much because it tasted like ash thanks to a bunch of smoking japanese men. I still do not know what is up there.

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