This morning we went to Miyajima which is an island separated from the mainland by the 500 metre wide Onoseto straight. From the hotel it was a case of walking round to the tube station to get to the train station, should have been easy but this is the first underground that doesn’t take our IC cards so we had to actually buy a ticket! We got to the train station but unfortunately didn’t realise that there were two train lines so after we had jumped in the first train that pulled in we realised that although we were sort of going in the right direction, the line split and we started heading in the wrong direction! This was quickly rectified by going back a station then getting on the next train, then it was onto the ferry and over to the island, all very easy really. Miyajima is actually very small only about 5.6 miles long and 3.7 miles wide, but it has been revered and worshiped since ancient times and the forests are one of the best preserved in the Seto sea. Miyajima is also home to the floating red tori gate which actually doesn’t float and only looks like it does at high tide, unfortunately we were there as the tide was going out but all the same we did get to see it surrounded by water as we arrived on the ferry. About 14% of the island is a world heritage site, this includes Itsukushima Shinto shrine, the sea to the front which includes the Tori gate and an amount of Mt Missen Primeval Forrest. We started by heading along Machiya Street to the five story pagoda, Machiya street has centuries old stores and houses, although to be honest some of them looked quite new, but it was a winding street and there were definitely more locals than tourists to be seen. We climbed up to the pagoda which looks like it has recently been repainted as it is very vivid red, it was built in 1407 and is 28 metres high, this has what we think was a meeting hall to the side but in contrast it looks quite old. From there we walked down the hill to Itsukushima Shrine which again I think should be surrounded by water at high tide but wasn’t. The shrine is a series of walkways linking individual shrines. We were Lucky in that a wedding party were just arriving as we were so we got to walk round with the bride, groom and their families who were mostly in traditional dress, about half way round I think the bride wished she had practiced walking in the platform flip flops! Once we left the shrine we walked up the hill to Daishoin temple, it was founded in the 12th century when Emperor Toba founded his prayer hall here, it was also used by the imperial family until the 19th century. The monks at the temple are members of the Shingon sect this is also known as esoteric Buddhism in Japan, it teaches that humans can obtain enlightenment through rituals combining physical, spoken and mental disciplines. We walked all round the shrine which has a large number of temples at least two rooms have one thousand images of Amida Nyorai (Buddha of infinite light) there were also a lot of Buddha statues wearing scarves, hats or both, they are Jizo Bosatsu images who are usually shown as Buddhist monks holding walking sticks, but in some cases they are wearing red bibs, caps and scarves like babies, this is because parents that have lost children take care of Jizo images as if they were their lost children. The other statues that seemed to be a little bit different were the Seven Deities of Good fortune, these looked a little like the seven dwarfs and I think are probably my favourite we walked back down the hill and along Takikoji alley which was once where priests and imperial messengers associated with Daishoin temple lived. It was lunchtime by the time we got back into town so we stopped at a street vendor and I had beef and Chris had chicken on a stick, mine was really nice and despite having to fend off the deer it was a nice lunch. We then jumped back on the ferry and walked round to Hiroshima castle. This was completely flattened by the bomb but has been rebuilt and now has information about the samurai way of life but most importantly it has great views over the city so we climbed to the top so that we could look all round the city. From here it wasn’t far to the peace park first stop was the Atom Bomb Dome, this building was only about 180 metres from the blast and although everyone inside was killed a lot of the structure remains, we decided to jump on the tourist bus to do a circuit of the town, it is actually quite a big area we ended up back where we started then walked through the peace park stopping at the children’s peace monument and flame of peace, we stopped at the cenotaph which contains the names of everyone that died as a result of the bomb , from the cenotaph you can look through and have a great view of the flame and the a bomb dome. The final two monuments we looked at in the park were the fountain of prayer and the statue of mother and children in the storm. By this time it was gone six so we went back to the room for a relax before going out for something to eat. I think the thing that has surprised me most about Hiroshima is that it is so green, I know that it has been 72 years since they dropped the bomb, but I thought that it would take years before the ground would recover enough to grow things but it seems that after about 10 years they were able to start planting trees and plants which mean it is now full of mature plants.
