Miyajima

Saturday was, for me, a very fun and yet very tiring day. I had at first intended to go with the group that was visiting Etajima to see the old Royal Naval Academy and the Battleship Yamato museum, but decided against it. That group was going to have to haul its luggage the whole day, take a couple long-ish boat rides (I really don’t do well on boats), and basically included rushing from spot to spot all day. I had had my fill of museums the day before at Hiroshima, which was incredible, if emotionally stressful, and was really looking forward to a relaxing day on Miyajima. After my breakfast of fish, miso, rice, tofu and various other traditional Japanese foods, I went with a couple of other people to see Itsukushima shrine about 3minute’s walk away from our hotel. It is a Shinto shrine that was built by Taira no Kiyomori of The Tale of Heike fame back a really long time ago on the inland sea. I mean, literally on the inland sea, with the buildings (including a contained Noh stage) built over the water, and the large Torii arch that marks a shrine’s official entrance out in the ocean a considerable distance. After visiting that, we stopped by the five-storied pagoda that is also affiliated with the Itsukushima shrine, and went into the odd sort of shrine that sits across from it. It is called Hokoku shrine, and it was commissioned by Toyotomi Hideyoshi back in 1587 as a Buddhist temple to pacify the souls of the war dead. It was, however, never completed, and thus has no proper interior ceiling or front entrance, and was recreated as a shrine to the soul of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It really has a beautiful location on top of a hill, and has various paintings and woodcuts on the rafters inside, as well as a ton and a half of rice scoopers in various sizes. They are standing in corners, attached to the rafters with the other art, stacked by next to the main shrine, and even available for sale so that one can write a wish (I assume) on it and offer it to the enshrined god. I had seen a massive rice scoop displayed in the town centre the day before, but after this I started to see them everywhere. No shop that I stopped in failed to have some sort of rice scooper for sale and every restaurant had at least one displayed inside. When shopping for my Hiroshima regional Hello Kitty, rice scoops again figured prominently among the choices. On the official Hiroshima Hello Kitty front I decided on Kitty dressed as a maple leaf and riding a rice scooper and one of Kitty riding a paper crane. The rest of the day was spent shopping around for Omiyage for my host family and eating more than was probably healthy. I finally settled on a bottle of sweet potato shochu (a form of Japanese liquor that is not made from rice) and one of sweet red bean shochu, some pickles and a box of the compulsory momiji manjuu, which are essentially cakes the texture of pancake filled with various things (everything from traditional red bean to blueberry or cheese) and made in the shape of maple leaves. Out of every 10 shops I saw, 13 sold momiji manjuu.
I feel compelled to make a note about the deer. As I noted before, they are quite cute, and completely used to humans and thus do not mind being touched, but they are crazed when it comes to food. One of them took a bite out of my shopping bag, and another ate a friend of mine’s map. I saw them chasing down schoolchildren that were carrying any kind of food, and they were not averse to walking right into the centre of a group of people and rifling through bags and pockets. After a long day, it was great to finally fall into my bed back in Kyoto and sleep until some ridiculous hour.
-Itsukushima is over the ocean, so it is nicer to visit the shrine while the tide is in for the full effect, thus the morning or late evening.
-Once you’ve seen the main buildings reflected in the water at high tide, wait for later afternoon when the tide goes out so that you can walk out to the torii to see how big it is.
-Food and other things are surprisingly cheap for a tourist town.
-beware of the deer.