Miyajima

If there were only two pictures of Japan that you’d ever seen, it’s likely that one of them would be of Mount Fuji, while the other would be of the great Tori Gate in the water off the island that is often called Miyajima now. Today we visited that Tori Gate. Unfortunately, the tides weren’t right - we visited at the time of month when there’s the least difference between the high and low tides, and we visited a couple of hours after the peak of the high tide (which was too low for the exactly right picture anyway). At low tide, you can walk out and touch the Tori Gate, so it definitely doesn’t look like it’s in the middle of the ocean. Also, it’s very popular, especially since today was a Saturday, so there were many people trying to get as close to the Tori Gate as possible (however, since it was a high low tide, people couldn’t actually touch it for very long). This also wrecks the illusion that it’s in the middle of the ocean. 

To get there, we took a train and the first ferry of the day. 

Everyone got off the ferry, walked along the side of the beach 

and visited the Tori Gate 

and the Itsukushima shrine. Tori gates welcome you to shrines, so it actually is part of the shrine. At the right tide, the shrine looks like it floats. However, today we saw it surrounded by mud. And it was quite crowded. At least we were on the first ferry, and visited the shrine immediately.

We then wandered up the hill to the Daisho-in Temple. Once you reach the temple, the hill becomes very steep, and the temple has a lot of parts at various levels. 

As I was coming down from the cave near the top, 

I saw a parade of priests going up to the pagoda.

After visiting the temple we walked along the streets, through Momijidani park 

to where the gondola up the mountain started. We took the gondola up, and then walked further up towards the top of Mount Milson. It was very steep, and none of us went all the way to the top.

On the way back, there was an enormous crowd, so we just got on the second ferry, and took the tram back to our hotel because, although it was slower than the train, it wasn’t crowded, and its terminus was right at the ferry, so we didn’t need to walk all the way to the railway station. I think it may also have been cheaper.