Miyajima

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We embarked on a day trip to Miyajima, an island not far from Hiroshima. If you have the Japan Rail pass the ferry is also covered.

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It is famous for it’s large torii gate which appears to float in water in high tide. In low tide you are able to walk to it and touch it. I was glad to see we got the high tide, I prefer the floating photos to take home with me. The torii gate is the welcoming entrance for Itsukushima Shrine which is also built over water.

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Greeted by cute deer as soon as we got off the boat.

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I was surprised to see that the deer were so tame and friendly. I really enjoyed their docile nature, I wanted to bring one home.

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Miyajima is also famous for their momuji manju cakes. James went nuts and got one in every flavour.

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No wonder the diet is surrounded by seaweed – there was so much around the island. I loved the contrast of the green and grey blue.

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There’s something majestic and romantic about the gate. Very grand… I couldn’t stop taking photos of it.. and it’ll probably show below as I failed to cull the finalists.

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The weather was horrible on us. The skies were thick in grey and the rains fell down heavily. We were so glad we made the effort to truck around the umbrellas we bought in Tokyo. I would’ve hated to spend money on umbrellas twice.

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I saw many wooden plates in the shop that were very expensive. I believe they are hand carved but I also wonder if they are of a special old tree from the area as these were much more costly than the ordinary hand carved wood crafts in Japan.

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The deer finding shelter from the rain…

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And one getting himself a lucky grooming!

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There were some amazing and crazy wood carvings in some Miyajima shops. Some of the trees that had to be used to create such large ethereal statues must have been very old and big.

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We continued to walk around the island and decided to head for the Ropeway. We stopped by for lunch at a cute standalone restaurant.

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We weren’t sure if we should’ve gone up because of the weather but we decided we had to anyway.

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Then we ventured on upwards.. slowly being able to see less and less.

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Until we were completely masked by nothing. It was really scary being in a ropeway.. without being able to see where you were going. It was literally just WHITE. Foggy fog fog.

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Cute little momiji leaf that fell onto my umbrella and stayed with me for two days… until James shook it off accidentally another day. Anyway when we got off the ropeway, we went up to the observatory to be met with a glorious view!

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Just kidding. That was it. That was the view. After climbing hundreds of metres above sea level I was not met with the sweeping ocean and island scenery. Hahahaha. But I actually found it pretty cool because I had never seen fog so thick and in such volume that you couldn’t see passed a few metres.

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We then started to go on a hike but I was very sick that day so my lungs were starting to struggle.

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Plus time was not in our favour so we went back to the ropeway. When we started descending down it seemed the fog was starting to clear but we were on one of the last service ropeways anyway and we didn’t feel like hiking down so we’ll just have to come back next time for the extraordinary Mt Misen views.

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We got back down to the bottom and grabbed some souvenirs. I also made dearly deer friend.

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LOOK RIGHT.

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LOOK STRAIGHT.

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LOOK ROMANTICALLY DEEP INTO EACH OTHER’S EYES

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He won the staring contest.

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To end our day we went back to Hiroshima to go to Bakudanya. A shop that is famous for starting the Hiroshima Tsukemen. A dry type ramen. OMG it was so delicious I was trying to hunt down the other franchises in Tokyo but they had already closed down. If anyone gets a chance to swing by Osaka or Hiroshima, you’ve gotta try it! It seriously was amazing and the amount of spice I asked for was perfect. We ended it off with their almond tofu which was absolutely delicious.

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