Destination: Japan
Duration: 8 Days 8 Nights (Nov 27~Dec 05, 2017)
Day 4: A Beautiful Day in Miyajima…sans Powerbank
Miyajima was our planned destination
on the day and we started to day by taking the electric streetcar to Hiroshima station
before taking JR train to Miyajimaguchi station to take the ferry. The Kansai-Hiroshima
pass covered for the JR train as well as the ferry to Miyajima. The ferry ride
took around 15minutes and we were sitting at the right side in order to take
picture of the floating shrine gate from the ferry.
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| School Bus for kindergarten students! So CUTE!!! |
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| Waiting for our train... |
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| Miyajimaguchi Ferry Terminal... |
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| Off we go to the Ferry! |
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| Sammy is happy to be on the ferry... |
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| Goodbye Miyajimaguchi Ferry Terminal.. |
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| The Mini Floating O-torii Gate at the back... |
It was 11am++ by the time we arrived
at Miyajima Island and the 1st thing we encountered was a deer
outside the ferry terminal. It was extremely tame & friendly and let
everyone patted it without fuss. Lil one loved it. There were more when we
walked towards the main shopping/dining street of the island and all were as
friendly as ever – just don’t walk near them when you had food in your hand
though. =D
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| Miyajima Guide Map! Just to show how far we've covered in our walk!!! |
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| Stepping on Miyajima Island |
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| Someone got a new friend! |
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| Another Friend!!! |
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| Some Giant Rice Scoop! |
Miyajima was famous for its oyster
thus our 1st stop would be Kakiya - the oyster restaurant to try
their premium oyster set. I was not an oyster person and in fact I generally
skipped raw oyster during buffet in Penang since they disgusted me. However,
the oyster here was really something else! It was not raw and was cooked in
variety of methods such as grill & deep fried which still preserved its
original flavor. The end result was a super scrumptious oyster meal which a
not-oyster person loved! YUM YUM!!!
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| Grilling the Oyster... |
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| The Premium Oyster Set |
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| With some Miyajima White Wine.... |
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| Kakiya |
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| Our 1st stop in Miyajima.. LOL |
We walked straight to the Floating
O-torii Gate and it was low tide where we could just walked towards the foot of
the gate! Hooray! We followed the crowd and took loads of pictures of the
floating gate as well as the Itsukushima shrine where we could see its lower
foundation during low tide. We took a super long time there before leaving the
area at the Daiganji Temple side which we had to walk a big round to be back to
the entrance of Itsukushima shrine. At least along the way we found many nice
spots for photoshooting. =P
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| Walking towards the main shrine area... |
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| Found a friend even near the fully exposed O-torii Gate!!! |
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| Sammy & the Gate... |
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| Right in the middle! |
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| It's Huge!!! |
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| Picture taken from another side towards the Shrine... |
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| The exposed Itsukushima Shrine without sea... |
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| Sammy is trying to lick it.... |
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| The Gate of Daiganji Temple |
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| A Random Spot with trees & drainage??? Or is it a river? |
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| Just happen we have a deer shape biscuit! |
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| The Pagoda |
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| Trees & Pagoda... |
We finally entered Itsukushima shrine
and the temple stood beautifully looking out to the sea. We took more picture in
the shrine as well as the O-torii Gate from the shrine as well.
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| The Entrance... |
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| Everything is in contrast of bright red & pale colors.... |
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| The Corridor |
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| O-torii Gate from the Shrine... |
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| The Main Shrine Section... |
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| Pagoda & Shrine! |
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| A Closed Bridge.... |
We continued to Daisho-in Temple
with some stairs involved which I thought was already lots of stairs (but this
proved to be wrong later!). It was in Daisho-in Temple that we noticed someone
left the powerbank at hotel!!! *Gasp in horror* We had been taking pictures
using hubby’s Huawei P9+ since we all agreed that it took the best pictures
among our other phones & outdated Nikon camera. Now the phone was dead and
we had no powerbank to charge it! *bawling* It kind of spoiled our mood to
really appreciate Daisho-in temple and we ended up taking pictures using Samsung
Note5 & Iphone6 alternatively after this incidence. We also had to conserve our phone battery to last for the day as it seemed like the battery all went crazy during cold weather! =(
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| Beautiful Scenery on our way to Daisho-in Temple.. |
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| Almost there!!! |
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| Not before climbing some stairs!!!! *sweat* |
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| Our 1st picture after Huawei P9+ is dead... this one with the Daisho-in Temple using iphone6... *facepalm* |
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| A View towards the shoreline from Daisho-in Temple... |
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| Let's go down again!!! |
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| Lots of Buddhas... |
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| Picture during the "Nature Walk" |
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| Sammy with the Leaves... |
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| Long Long way to go... |
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| A View towards the Pagoda from higher ground... |
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| One of my favourite pictures! Deers & Trees in the Park! Taken with Samsung Note5.. keep wondering whether the color will look nicer if taken with Huawei P9+.. >.< |
From the park, there was another
long walk to get to the Ropeway station – we truly never expected it to be such
a long walk as it took us around 40minutes from Daisho-in temple to finally
reaching the station (with some photoshooting stops). It was almost 3pm by the
time we got on the ropeway. We were given our own gondola since there was no
crowd. We had to switch the ropeway halfway up the hill into a larger and newer
gondola before reaching the top station.
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| Still not yet reaching the ropeway station... |
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| Finally there is the SIGN!!! |
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| But 1st - let's have more stairs to climb! |
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| The Miyajima Ropeway |
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| On the way up! |
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| Amazing view at the background! |
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| Getting higher... |
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| Time to change Gondola! |
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| In the other Gondola |
We took some pictures at the
Shishi-iwa observatory before setting off to summit Mt Misen! *cue proud music*
We had a very short timeline as the last gondola would depart at 5pm and it was
already 3.30pm when we started our hike. According to the information given, it
would take 30minutes (1 way) from Shishi-iwa observatory to the summit so we
had to hurry to avoid missing the last gondola. Thus we walked, walked &
walked (crawled sometimes) to this rather steep hiking trail which involved
TONs of never-ending stairs!!! Well it really took us 30minutes++ to reach the
Mt Misen summit without photoshooting stops and lil one actually reached there on
her own before me whilst looking dumbfounded at my out of breath predicament. *facepalm*
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| At Shishi-iwa Observatory |
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| Magnificent View... |
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| Let's take a picture! |
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| Time to begin our hike! |
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| Lil one even has energy to pose for photo midway! |
The view at the summit was really breathtaking (literally!!!). We took some pictures from the Mt Misen Summit observatory which was supposed to close at 4pm but the person was so nice to still let us in. We started our descend to the Misen Hondo (Misen Main Hall) and the Reikado (Hall of the Spiritual Flame) area. The Reikado actually was the origin of the “Peace Flame” in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park that we visited last night.
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| Finally at the Mt Misen Summit Observatory!!! |
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| See that building at the other side? That's Shishi-iwa observatory - we hiked all the way from there!!! |
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| Sammy makes it! |
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| Reaching the summit all on her own!!! |
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| The Mt Misen Summit Observatory |
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| Time to descend... |
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| At the Misenhondo Hall |
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| Hall of Eternal Flame |
We continued downhill to the station
and this time managed to get on the 4.45pm gondola. Going downhill was
definitely easier than the uphill hike earlier. The Sky was already getting dark
by the time we reach the base station.
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| Random Giant Trees |
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| The tiny building at the top left (on top of the other hill) is the Mt Misen Summit observatory!!! What a hike! |
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| The Mt Misen Summit Observatory right on the top of the hill... |
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| It's near dusk! |
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| We make it down the Miyajima Ropeway base station.. *HALF DEAD* |
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| Yet another small shrine on our way back to the main area... |
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| Thankfully the area is well lit! |
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| Looks pretty even at dusk... |
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| Getting close to the main area.... |
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| The Itsukushima Shrine with submerged with sea.... |
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| The Floating O-torii Gate! We were just standing at the base earlier today!!! |
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| The Gate & me.. =P |
There was this unassuming noodle
house - Okkundo: Mazemen just beside our hotel which happened to be highly
rated by tripadvisor. It was full when we went there but thankfully available
when we returned after resting a bit in our hotel room. The menu was really
simple where you choose to have cold or warm noodle with preferred spicy level
& size. The concoction of noodle, broth & the soft boiled egg was
really delicious especially when you had an empty tummy. We also ordered some rice and mixed it with leftover broth - similar to what Japanese did on theirs. =)
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| The English Menu... |
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| The Restaurant Exterior |
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| The Noodle - Regular Size and 1 with extra Cha-syu |
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| Rice to mix with leftover broth.. |
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| Water or Sake? Gyoza or fried chicken? |
Next Day: Hiroshima & Fushimi Inari
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