TacoCat’s Travels #154 (Hiroshima): Sailing to Shrine Island? Oh Deer! ⛩

Hey Hive!

If you missed the last couple of posts, we're recounting our trip to Hiroshima back in April 2019! Sean had won some free air tickets to Hiroshima from a lucky draw sponsored by one of the local banks in Singapore, DBS! Since we've never been, we decided that was a good chance to explore the Chūgoku region!

So last week, we took a chill day just going shopping and cafe hopping! We visited a Mega Donki Hote, tried a new katsu restaurant before going to try souffle pancakes and hanging out at an arcade!

11 April 2019. Thursday.

So I kinda teased where we were going at the end of the last post, and if you managed to figure it out it's actually an island by itself called Miyajima! We've actually seen this place online before so we were really excited to go and visit it ourselves!

Miyajima is a small island less than an hour outside the city of Hiroshima. Although officially named Itsukushima, it is more widely known as Miyajima, Japanese for "shrine island" because it is most famous for its key shrine, Itsukushima shrine and giant torii gate, which at high tide seems to float on the water. The sight is ranked as one of Japan's three best views. (Source: japan-guide)

So we had to take a ferry from Hiroshima Bay to get there and they have boats going back and forth every hour or so. After we bought some snacks from the convenience store, we headed to the port to board the ferry!

Thankfully it wasn't a long walk from our apartment to the port, and soon enough, we arrived at the port! There was even a huge sign just for the Miyajima Ferry!

So we headed there and there was actually quite a crowd disembarking from the ferry. We'd never taken a boat in Japan before so this was going to be a unique experience!

The ferry had 2 levels with both indoor and outdoor areas.This was what it looked like indoors.

But it did get kind of stuffy and cramped with so many people and little ventilation so we headed outdoors to take a look especially when we were arriving at the island. You could actually already see the famous giant torii gate in the distance already as we were approaching!

Here's a slightly closer picture:

The port was quite a ways away from the gate though, so when we disembarked we had to walk there. But it gave us a nice opportunity to explore the island at the same time, which was lovely.

One of the first things we saw when we arrived were these deer resting under cherry blossom trees!

This deer was just chilling under the tree right near the ferry terminal so we tried to snap a few pics with him.

He couldn't really be bothered with us though. I think he's bored of humans admiring him.

I think we haven't seen deer since we last went to Nara in 2016! But we took a similar photo back then:

I think we tried to recreate it but welp.

The other tourists also got really excited with the deer around and some of them were feeding the deer some biscuits too. I think the deer were all really sleepy though.

They looked so peaceful just relaxing in the daylight.

I tried to mimic this one XD

There were plenty of shops near the port, ranging from restaurants to various souvenir shops and boutiques.

We didn't really go in to take a look since it was already past noon and we wanted to see the island.

So we just took a stroll down this avenue and took a quick look while walking past on the way to the gate. I think this was grilled saltwater eel that actually smelled pretty good!

and these were beef skewers called doteyaki:

There was even a bakery called Yamadaya selling the local specialty momiji-manju, which is a buckwheat and rice cake shaped like a Japanese maple leaf, and is unique to the island!This bakery itself had so many different flavours!

They kinda looked like mooncakes tbh and I bet they tasted like it too.

It was like a little market here with so many little shops and street stalls.

And this very understated looking seafood restaurant:

We also saw a couple of doggos like this adorable sheeb:

And a couple walking their poodles:

And of course, more sleepy forest puppers, I mean deer:

There was even a deer guarding this nice stone lamp just ahead of the torii gate!

So we started making our way to what was essentially a beach near the giant torii gate. There were even a few gondolas that people were riding in.

This was the entrance to the shrine. I guess this whole beach area was the shrine.

But it was very much a beach, although there was kind of a wall here instead of a shore. This sandy pathway was lined with 2 aisles of stone lamps which was pretty cool.

We saw a couple of deer here too, admiring the view of passers-by who came to check out the shrine and gate.

They seemed pretty at peace at least.

The tide was pretty high at the moment so part of the gate was submerged in water. It was quite a sight to behold though.

Especially with the mountains in the background. If only the weather was nicer that day, but it was pretty cooling so we didn't complain too much. And at least it wasn't raining.

We even saw the same shiba inu again!

And this was the teaser photo I showed at the start of this post and the end of the last one! I actually managed to get a pic of this deer with the gate.

After taking a bunch more photos of the gate, we headed inwards to explore more of the shrine and came across this.. stable of sorts?

There was also the entrance to the shrine buildings on this side:

And you could actually see the rest of the shrine that was floating over the water just like the gate! It actually looked pretty cool!

At the entrance to Itsukushima shrine, they even had a tide table to show when it was going to be high and low tide, although of course it was just a rough estimate.

I think you had to pay to enter the shrine, but since we wanted to explore the other side of the island too, we left after taking a look.

There was also this sign warning people not to get too close or feed the deer since they were wild deer and could hurt people if they weren't careful or respectful.

There was still much left of the island to explore so tune in next week to see what we get up to next! Hint: more snacks and markets to come!

Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!

TacoCat’s Travels #153 (Hiroshima): Mega Snacks and Mini Games? 🕹

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