Hiroshima (Day 2) - Itsukushima / Miyajima / Mt. Misen
We're well rested from our quiet night in and ready to take on Itsukuhima (a.ka. Miyajima) Island today. We're taking a boat out to the island. We've just missed one and have about a 30 minute wait til the next one, so we take a seat and snack on our trusty 7/11 sandwiches and coffee we picked up along the way.
The boat arrives and we hop on. The cruise over there takes us past the length of Hiroshima and it's bigger than we thought. The cruise takes about an hour and it's pretty smooth sailing.
We arrive at the island and it's a beautiful day. We wander along the shoreline for a bit and take it in. The water is clear and clean and looks very swimmable, if it were a tad warmer! There are more deer to greet us, however the signs here say not to pat or feed the deer, unlike Nara. Nobody seems to take any notice of these rules, although these deer seem a little more relaxed and less food obsessed.
We continue on and make note of a brewery to come back to later in the day. We get to the Itsukuhima Floating Torii Gate, which is one of the islands main attractions. As the name suggests, it's in the water and at high tide gives the impression it's floating on the water. At low tide you can walk out to it. We snap some photos and continue on.
Next stop on our list is the top of Mt Misen to check out the view of Hiroshima and its surrounds. We follow the signs and get to a cross roads where you can either take the rope car (cable car) to the top or you can walk up. Naturally we take the harder option, gotta work off that beer and gyoza somehow! We start up the path and pass a sign saying to beware of wasps and viper snakes, yikes. We're hoping something has been lost in translation there! The walk is pretty steep and there's pretty much no respite the whole way up.
It's as steep as Lofty and we get a good sweat on. The scenery is lovely and lush and really forest like, not at all what you would expect from an island in Japan. Just short of the top we come by some sort of ritual or ceremony going on with monks and a big gong and a bunch of smoke, pretty cool spot for it atop a mountain!
We finally make it to the top and enjoy the view. Again, were surprised how big this part of Japan is, as it seems like a pretty small and manageable place in comparison to the other Japanese cities we've visited. We make our way down via the rope car, which is pretty cool sailing across the tree tops, which this island is basically blanketed in.
Once we're back on solid ground we grab a snack of meat on a stick and a couple of coffees. We explore the remainder of the shoreline and pick up some souvenirs.
Feeling pretty confident we've seen most of what this island has to offer, we hit the brewery for a few beers, well earned after our mountain climb. There's a few different varieties of beers on offer, a novelty as it's mostly just lager everywhere else we've been. Not bad. We head back to the boat for our ride back to the city, a little windier than earlier but still pretty cruisy.
We hop off the boat and head to Ichiran, the restaurant chain where you order your ramen from a vending machine. After we've got our fix, we wander around the shops for a bit, grab some donuts for dessert then head back to the hotel for another quiet night, after another massive day of exploring.