Finally after over two months of my study abroad, I got to go on a trip outside of Hiroshima city. It was like 30 minutes, but it still counts! I went to a lovely island called Miyajima. It is quite popular with domestic tourists, but luckily, on the day I went it wasn’t overpacked. I went with only two of my Taiwanese friends, who don’t really speak English that much (understand: at all), which was an amazing opportunity to force myself into using the language, as it is something I’ve been struggling with. And our group wasn’t too large either, just how I like it.
The journey itself (train and ferry) was really short and affordable. Had I known that, I would’ve gone ages ago! And it was so exciting, as the ferry was approaching the island and we could see the famous torii gate getting bigger and bigger.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, torii gate getting bigger and all exciting, but what did you do there?” Well, I’m glad you asked, my friend (definitely not me talking to myself). The island is not huge but there’s so much to do. Personally, I did only two touristic things on this trip. I visited the Itsukushima shrine, which is, btw, a UNESCO site. The Great torii gate is close by and I got lucky, as the reconstruction had just finished, so I could get really close to it (this was impossible in the previous months). What makes the gate fascinating is that the view changes with the tides. In the morning, I could walk under it, but as we were leaving, it was all flooded.
My other activity for the day was a spontaneous hike. As the autumn had just started when we went on the trip, I wanted to see the nice red leaves. On Miyajima, there’s a special park for it. Unfortunately, it was still a bit too early, but we did see at least a few trees that had started changing colours. It was a lovely day with amazing weather (maybe 25°C), beautiful nature, and we were walking by the river following some signs. One of my friends hates walking though, so when she heard that after a half an hour of walking, we still want to continue who knows where, she decided to go to a Starbucks instead and wait for us there. But my other friend wanted to see more. So we set off for the Mount Misen, not knowing what we got ourselves into. On the signs it said 2km or something similar, which doesn’t sound like a lot. What we kind of ignored was the fact that it was all up the hill. Logical, right, it’s a mountain. That was our bad. What, however, we couldn’t have expected was the fact that it was basically all stairs. All. Stairs. I… I hate stairs, I really do. And I can’t say the views were not worth it, they absolutely were. From the top, we could see basically the whole island, it was magnificent. At that time, I’d forgotten about the stairs. The only problem was going back. One (Yours Truly) would think that it’s easier, but no, it was actually worse because we were already tired and it was so steep that we couldn’t help it but fell a few times trying to get back. But we survived without any consequences (if you were wondering if that’s why the blog was dead for a while).
Okay, and finally, let’s talk food for a second, because as any other place in Japan, Miyajima has its own specialties as well. One of them is a very expensive eel dish, that as a person living on a student budget, I did not try. The much more affordable local delicacy (and if you’re on a diet, stop reading) is a deep fried Momiji manju, which we could describe as a little cake with some kind of filling (sweet bean paste, matcha, chestnut, sweet potato, but also more western flavours such as chocolate or custard). I had the chocolate one and as it’s freshly fried, it chocolate is all melty and amazing and I can’t wait to go back.
And do I have anything negative to say about this place? Well, it’s me, so absolutely. The deer! (Oh dear! (even I hate myself for this one, I apologise)) But actually, they were so annoying! I witnessed one of them tearing apart someone’s paper bag and stealing receipts and eating them! And then this thing comes over to me! I do like animals, I love them, but not when their trying to rob me. So beware if you ever go~
