Téa is ready first this morning, because our hotel room comes with a breakfast buffet, and this girl is hoping for some eggs and pastries for breakfast! However, Japanese breakfast buffets are not North American breakfast buffets, so here’s what we had for breakfast this morning:
Today, we’ll be visiting Miyajima, a sacred island in the ocean by Hiroshima. To get there, we walk to a streetcar and take the long way around. It takes an hour on the streetcar, and we get to see the outskirts of Hiroshima all the way to the port. From the port, we take a 10 minute ferry ride across to Miyajima.
Miyajima, the island where you’re not allowed to be born, nor to die. Miyajima, the island with deer walking free, looking for food everywhere.
The torii gate is both the most accessible and the most famous sight on this island, and so we’re lining up to get the best shots without the crowds. We’ve been keeping an eye on the tide charts leading up to our visit, and did not feel like getting here at 8am for low tide, nor are we staying until 5pm to be able to maybe possibly walk out to the gate on the muddy ocean floor. So we are here at high tide, and make due with great shots of the gate “floating” in the water.
The gate leads to the shrine, a sprawled out building that also sits on stilts in the water. We walked behind this building later in the day, and the mud was unreal. I’m glad we’re not dirtying socks, shoes and pants to walk on that! That said, the last time I visited, there was not a soul who entered the actual shrine. Now, the tourists are everywhere.
We have decided to find the ropeway and go explore the top of the island, apparently the views are magnificent. On our way there, we smell bbq and decide to have a snack. Joe, Maylin and I share a couple of octopus legs on sticks, and Téa picks an okonomiyaki stick.
The path through the village is charming, and we pass the store where my mom and I shopped for souvenirs way back when. Glad to see some things have stayed the same, even though the growth has almost squeezed out all the old places.
We start following the path towards the rope way, and prepare for a little bit of a walk.
The path takes us past some beautiful scenery, and the leaves are changing colours as well.
We make it to the back of the ropeway line at a set of stairs, and the sign promises that the line from here takes 40-60 minutes. Oh no, we say, it’s already cold enough and now we have to stand more or less still for an hour?
We finally make it to the front of the line, and are crammed into a cabin with four others. This one will only take us part way! It’s a steep and tightly squeezed ride up the mountain.
At the midway station, we switch from one ropeway to another, this one fits 30 adults per cabin. Feels like taking the subway at rush hour, but as we are now on the other side of the mountain, the views open up to incredible oceans and mountain and island views!
The view from the top is amazing, but freezing. We see people in shorts and we see people in jackets with scarves and toques. I could sit up here for a long time, I’m just not keen on the crowded conditions. Lines everywhere! And no washrooms. AND it’s cold, I’d dress better next time.
There’s wildlife everywhere on this island, which is something we don’t see at all in Osaka, other than in zoos, animal cafés and pet stores. The below guy was posing, a lady was taking so many pictures right in front of him.
Joe wanted to do the one hour hike to the very top of Mt Misen, but I vetoed the thought of an hour there and back in this wind and in this terrain. We were not dressed for this, and it was getting late. Only then did he tell me about the Lover’s Sanctuary, and that he wanted to go up there to be romantic. Luckily, there’s a Satelite of Lover’s Sanctuary right in the ropetow building! Joe and I took our places on opposite sides of the lamp in the glass, lit the flame and reiterated our commitment to each other.
It took about an hour to get back down as well, and now we needed to find some lunch! We browsed some stores along the shopping street, and found a couple we’d like to come back to. Joe led us to a restaurant where they asked if tatami mat seating was ok, and so we got to try out the shoeless, sit-on-the-floor-with-a-short-table style of dining.
After a very late lunch, we reemerged around 4pm, and found a fun vending machine first thing after the restaurant:
Of course there’s Japanese cuteness everywhere, so the girls made me take this picture of them:
THEN we found dessert – waffle balls in the shape of Maylin’s favourite characters!
By now, the stores were starting to close, and the sun was starting to set. We made our way back to the ferry, and got a great view of an impressive deer who used his horns to tell a tourist exactly how much distance he wanted…
We got a great last view of the Torii gate as well.
It was pitch dark outside by the time we made it back to town. By now, we were icicles to the core, had not had dinner, and all we wanted to do was to go back to the hotel and take a hot bath. We stopped at 7Eleven, the girls had some fried chicken pieces, we picked up some additional snacks, and got to enjoy the other side of the Boulevard of Peace and the beautiful Christmas lights there. 
We managed to find a few different flavours of maple leaf pastries on our way off the island, but these were not as good as the ones they gave us samples, of course… still pretty cute, and even though they don’t taste Canadian, they sure look like they’re from back home!
The baths defrosted us, and we ended the night eating our snacks and watching Christmas movies in fun PJs in our hotel beds.
For en flott dag! Synd bildet med julelysene ikke kom frem, men dere ser virkelig söte ut i pysjene fra hotellet 🙂
Kommer det ikke frem? 😱 Og takk! 😁
Nå har jeg lasta opp en mindre versjon av samme bilde – håper det funker nå!