Our plans for the day were to travel out to Miyajama and see the Itsukushima Shrine. After a taxi trip to the port we caught a ferry over to Miyajama. It was overcast and we had a bit of light rain during the day, but it wasn’t cold at all.
The whole island is a world heritage site and its just beautiful walking around the area.
The ‘floating’ torri gate …
The shrine is built so that at high tide the water comes up underneath. The floorboards have gaps between them to allow the movement and pressure of the rising water. As you walk around the shrine it feels as though its floating on the water.
Back on the ‘land’ part of the shrine area – this is where you wash your hands before making your requests/ prayers & offerings at the shrine.
The monks were ‘working’ all the time we were visiting, you can see one of the monks praying dressed in an orange robe, in front of the man in the pink shirt. At the front people are lighting incense in that big bowl and making their prayer requests.
Then we walked around the town for a while… lots of steps everywhere!
We visited the folk museum which had a great display about the history of the island. It also had an original house we could go through which was really good.
Beautiful gardens with views to the gardens from most rooms.
The Masters room -where the master of the house entertained and did business.
The little ‘verandah overlooked the koi pond and they were very happy to be fed.
Back outside for some more walking…
The tide was starting to go down as we walked back past the main shrine buildings.
Up these stairs to see the pagoda and another shrine on the left..
Deer wander freely about the island.
We had a great day on Miyajima and I would visit the island again given a chance.
At 5.03 we caught the bullet train to Tokyo which arrived at 9.01 – exactly on time as is usual here in Japan – not one minute early or one minute late!
After getting back to Tokyo Station we got a taxi back to our hotel in Shinjuku, however our luggage was no where to be found. I eventually found an email saying they had cancelled our luggage transfer booking – no reason given! So we walked back to our old hotel, found our luggage was still there and then wheeled it back to our new hotel at about 10.30 – 11pm. Fortunately it wasn’t too far but by the time we got to our room it was nearly midnight and we needed to be up early for our last full day in Japan – Mt Fuji & Lake Ashee.