Miyajima aka: 宮島, Itsukushima, 厳島

The island is officially named Itsukushima, but is more commonly known as Miyajima, which is Japanese for ‘shrine-island’.

My friend and I hired a couple of bikes for a few hours and rode along the beach and then through the village. It was a good way to take in the sights, as we only had two hours to spend. Coming back along the beach, I took this photo of an old man fishing off the rockwall.

We got there late so we didn’t have the opportunity to go up to the top of the hill for the legendary view…but we loved this place nonetheless. As the ferry tugged closer to the island, we saw that the tide was coming in so we raced down the shore and were just in time to see the sun setting behind the torii even though we didn’t get to walk out to it. Beautiful. In the new dusk, we walked back to the center of the island and went inside a restaurant to get warm where we ate okonomiyaki. Will and the chum fell asleep on the ferry back but we didn’t seem to mind carrying them up to our rooms and the futons on tatami mats.

A beautiful day…

heed my advice: watch out for the DEER! they will eat ANYTHING, (including your map) and will swarm you if you look like you’re even considering feeding them!

I think the soft-serve ice cream here was better than any other I’d had in Japan, but that could just be me :P

set aside at least a whole day to explore this amazingly beautiful island!

try the sweets the local shops have to offer, I went in autumn so there were lots of freshly-cooked maple-leaf-shaped manju SOOOOO good~

One of the three most beautiful places in Japan, they say. Watch out for those pesky deer, they’ll run off with your momiji-manju if you don’t watch out!