Today was another AMAZING day in our Hiroshima adventures! It was completely exhausting but very worth it 😀 Miyajima is small island which is very famous for its huge tori (the red gate things in front of shrines). It’s massive and stands freely in the ocean so it’s quite something. I was really looking forward to doing this island again; last time we sort of whizzed around it and I didn’t get to see much other than the main touristy bits. We were going to climb the mountain! Woo!
We had a really relaxing morning which was great, we ended up leaving about 11am and sat on the number 2 tram for about 70 minutes until the end of the line. The change in scenery was really rapid! When we arrived at the ferry port, we went into a little cafe type place and had chips and ice cream. The ice cream had half a momiji manjuu in it! That’s a yummy cake with stuff in the middle that Miyajima is also famous for 🙂
Just a little different from the town!
The tram that took us to the port
Right outside the station, two kinds of ferries and some places to eat
My ice cream! The momiji manjuu is the maple leaf shaped thing
Inside; yummy bean paste
Queueing for the ferry
Bekah and her ice cream
You can just about see the gate in the distance
So the first thing we did was spend a few minutes being amazed by the deer! They’re just chilling everywhere. They don’t care. Except if you have food of course. So when we got some yummy things on sticks, they rather came after us! Before eating we had also been past the gate and the shrine and taken plenty of pictures so here you go!
Sakura season was getting really close!!
Bekah and her first deer experience
Our new friend
Deer selfie!
They just don’t care! Like cats…
Sometimes they’re pretty stupid looking though…
A map of the island. We chose the Daishoin course on the right
Deer and the gate
Tori selfie!
Blossoms and the pagoda
A better shot of the pagoda itself; thanks Bekah!
Some of the yummy food you could grab
My delicious corn on the cob!
After our snacks, we decided to head up! The sign told us it was 2.7km with a lot of steps so we were prepared…. but apparently not quite enough! But the whole walk was gorgeous. My favourite part was going past the fences (again) to play in the waterfall! There were loads of places that people had piled rocks (not sure why) so in the waterfall I joined in 🙂 It will be easier to explain via pictures again, so please read the captions 🙂
The start of the walk!
Just a pretty bridge on the way
The start of the trail; a little river already and a lovely view
There were lots of these little Buddha enshrining places; not sure what they’re for but this one with all its knitted glory caught my eye
I had a quick paddle
Very refreshing!
The temple on the way; still very early on
Panos are fun!
See my tiny rock on top? I don’t know what the aim is but I had a go
See there, all the rock piling
A dam? We climbed it anyway
Bekah on a wee bridge a little way in; the waterfall is in the background!
Crazy tree
Being good behind the fence. Take note of the two small rocks on the big boulder.
Oh woops, we crossed the fence again
Meow do you do?
See the two rocks on this giant boulder? I climbed up and put my own there. Obviously I was not the first!
Done!
I felt very awesome up there
More rocky glory
Teamwork selfie! Bekah had to give me a push up the rock 😛
Chilling. We spent about an hour here just playing around 🙂
Mysterious floating rock
Bekah got into the no shoes mood!
Woo!
A bit of gymnastics on the edge
Climbing the old, fallen log
Log-Bekah
A great view of the falls that few people will have seen!
After an awful lot of stairs, we found a rest stop! Only to find we hadn’t even come a quarter of the hike!!
It had a great view though
Another little Buddha place; they loved putting them in creepy, uner-rock places
Bekah in front of said creepy, under-rock place
Some gorgeous rock patterns
When we got here there was a person filling their water bottle, so I did the same!
Fresh water!
Another look at the course, and how far we had come
Nio gate. By the time we were here it was really remote and also quite late in the day.
The scary gate guardians(?)
Rawr
We stopped for a rest on a big rock and took some photos
Just defying death. You know.
A Bekah pano!
There’s even rocks on this tori
Deer up here too
A random shrine we found; not sure where on the map it was! But it was very cool; all washed out and so on.
Just in front of the shrine; quite a drop!
More shrine
See how washed out it is? It was pretty windy up there
This one had loads of toys and a million bibs!
More creepy, under-rock Buddhas
A mysterious hole in the rock that always had water in it
WE MADE IT! The observatory at the top.
While we were there a really crazily triumphant song played too; I think it was telling us it was 5pm but we rather felt like we were being congratulated!
A pano from the top
Another pano
Less creepy, but still under a rock!
A very cheery fellow at the entrance to the temple we ended up at
It was for love!
This is pretty cool if it’s true
The whole walk had been a huge adventure! It was a shame the temple at the top was closed, but we did get there after 5pm so I guess that made sense! It was really great to explore the whole path properly; we didn’t just walk it, we really went around and had rests and did it at our own pace so it was amazing.
Once we had finished looking at the temple, we headed towards the cable car; another 0.7km on top of the 2.5km plus exploration we had done so far! There wasn’t a huge amount to see; just more walking and nature, but this turned out to be a good thing as we nearly missed the last cable car down! We got there at about 5.26pm and heard the announcement for the last car down! That was a bit scary. That took us to another cable car and then to a bus. God knows what we would have done if we had missed it! Walked down in the dark I guess!
Our ticket down the mountain
I have never seen such an empty cable car!
Relieved as anything
Cable car number 2
Bus!
Once we had made it down safe and sound, we really needed some food! We were in the mood for big and hearty and went walking down the main shopping street. We bought some momiji manjuu, saw the humungous rice ladle and found ourselves an okonomiyaki place! It was glorious food but again I had to give Bekah my last third! Soooo much food. Then it was ferry time; we were so tired and hysterical by this point that we hadn’t even noticed the ferry move and suddenly we were there! It was completely weird. We got straight on the tram home after that, read a bit and went to bed 🙂
One last look at the gate on the way to the shops
GIANT RICE LADLE. Why? No idea.
Yum!
It had cheeeeeese on it
My momiji manjuu bag
My matcha flavoured momiji manjuu
The inside!
Last picture of the day; on the way home 🙂
Maisy In Japan 