Japan Trip: Hiroshima and Miyajima

Playing: Cecilia and the Satellite-Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Reading: The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan (Very odd.)

After our time in Fukuoka, we took a Shikansen to Hiroshima, where we spent three days. On our first day there, Tina and I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Hiroshima Peace Park, which is what Hiroshima is probably best known for. The museum itself is historically important, I understand, but a lot of the content is rather disturbing because it deals with the effects of the atomic bomb and shows rather graphic photos (and artifacts) of the effects. If you're into history, go take a look, but I wouldn't advise it for children.

We ended up meeting up with our friend, Alex, at our hotel before heading off to Okonomi-mura. Okonomi-mura is a building dedicated to the popular fried cabbage pancake called okonomiyaki with stall after stall of okanomayaki restaurants. At all of the stalls, you sit at a counter, while your food is cooked in front of you. If you're there, you have to order the okanomayaki with noodles in it because Hiroshima is known for its noodle addition.We chose the specific booth we ate at because it was the only one offering okonomyaki made with udon.

The main reason why we stopped off at Hiroshima was so that we could take a day trip to Miyajima, an island popular with Japanese tourists for its shrines and wild deer. Although Miyajima is most famous for Itsukushima Shrine, I personally preferred Daisho-in Temple. The temple sprawled throughout Miyajima, up hillsides and over small streams. Pretty much everywhere I looked was picture perfect.

During high tide, the three of us took a rowboat out to look at the torii, the red arch, that made Itsukushima Shrine famous. The rowboat tour cost 800 yen and the tour is only offered in Japanese. Luckily, I had Tina and Alex there to translate for me. If you can't speak Japanese (or don't have a handy dandy translator), but still want to go out on the ocean to get near the arch, you can try renting a paddle board or wait until the tide is low enough for you to walk to it.

Other than the beautiful shrines and temples, Miyajima had excellent hiking trails and streams to run through. The three of us spent most of our day running up the mountain side and gallivanting through streams to the point where the three of us suffered sore muscles for the next day or so. We only stopped exploring when the sun started to go down out of fear of missing the last ferry back to the mainland. Miyajima also had deer roaming around the whole island, meaning you can go feed deer during your time there too.

PS Don't miss my Japan trip giveaway! Tons of cute beauty products and accessories could be yours. Only 3 days left!

Edit-The giveaway is now closed and Mindy Fan of Broken Eggshells won. I will be contacting you by email shortly.