Marc's Blog: japan - Japan Day 13: Miyajima

π 2016-07-24 01:01 in Japan, Japan2016, Ntrips, Trips

After a half day in Hiroshima, we went to Miyajima, a small island about 30mn away and easily accessible by Ferry:

Miyajima is famous for its famous tori gate in the water, as well as semi wild deer, which are very nice and not trying to beg for your food:

There are lots of things to see there, more than enough for a full day:

Itsukushima Shrine os the main attraction on the island, a very nice shrine with its floating tori gate in the water, depending on the tide. It's not like quite Mt St Michel in France, but the tide goes pretty far in and out:

Lots of wildlife happy fishing in the marsh sands during half and low tide:

Mid vs high tide:

The tori gate during mid and high tide:

During low tide, the whole temple was on stilts without water underneath anymore:

We went to the treasure museum:

Then, we went to visit Tomyoin temple:

Next, we went to Daishoin, which was super nice and well worth a visit:

there was a half hidden entrance to a pitch dark tunnel under the temple

the dark tunnel had a few dim lit figurines

From there, we took a hiking path to the bottom of the ropeway up. Sadly, by then it was 16:00, which I thought was fine, but turns out in a great moment of stupidity, they close the top observatory at 16:00, and the rest of the temples close at 17:00 (not as bad, we had time to get there before then). We took the ropeway and the following gondola to the top, and had just enough time to see the temples at the top before they closed. We then made out way to the very top, where the observatory was closed, but somehow I slipped, fell, and found myself on the other side of the closed fence, talk about luck... Since I was on the other side, I went to the top to get nice pictures :)