We made up for it on day 2 by seeing lots of sights. We started by taking a train and then a ferry to Miyajima island:
Upon arriving on the island, you can see many tame but wild deer wandering around:
They are even tame enough to pet, although I did see a few of them harassing people by following them if they had food in their hands:
We had gone to the island to see a famous shrine which looks like it is floating on water. We first passed through the land entrance gate to the shrine:
There is another entrance gate (large and red), which is in the bay, which you can just see by looking through this sculpture:
As you can see in the next photo, it looks like the entrance gate is in the middle of the bay. This was just after high tide. If you wait for low tide, you can actually walk out to the gate:
Here is a picture of me quite a ways from the gate, although looking almost as tall as it:
The large red gate is the entrance way to Itsukushima Shrine. Since high tide had past, you can start to see some land appearing as the tide went down. At high tide, the entire shrine looks like it is floating:
The bottom of the posts holding up the shrine can be changed before the wood gets rotten. In this next photo, you can see where the water has already receded:
From the shrine, we went for a nice walk up the island and had a nice view of the bay as well as a temple in the forest:
After that, we head into the tourist town near the shrine for lunch. In the town, we could see things like the local version of Hello Kitty:
A very large wooden shamoji (the scoop used to serve rice): 
People baking oysters for passersby:
What Ayako especially liked though was the momiji manju (Japanese maple-shaped soft cake with different flavour paste inside it). We shared ten different flavours, which made me quite full since we had just finished lunch:
Here is a view into a store with the machine that made the manju:
We then headed back to Hiroshima. We stopped at the A-Bomb Dome, which is the only building still standing after the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
We also went to the museum, which explained a lot about the bombing of Hiroshima and was definitely worth visiting. Since the bomb exploded almost directly overhead of the dome, it was able to remain standing, while most of the buildings near it were flattened:
We walked to the other side of the river, past The Flame of Peace, which will be put out when all atomic weapons are destroyed:
After that, there was a memorial cenotaph, which when you look through, you can see the Flame of Peace and behind it, the A-Bomb Dome:
We also passed by the Sadako statue, for the girl, Sadako Sasaki, who started making paper cranes when her leukaemia got bad and completed 1000 before dying. It is said that you will be granted one wish if you make 1000 cranes:
Since then, many people have made paper cranes and send them to Hiroshima. Below are some of the cranes made. Each glass box contains cranes donated during a week and afterwards they are taken to a special building where they are all kept:
At night, we ate Hiroshimayaki, which is the special version of okonomiyaki in Hiroshima. It's made with batter, noodles, cabbage, bacon, eggs and other ingredients. It's fun to watch it being made:
And it was yummy to eat as well. We actually had it the night before as well:
And that was our Hiroshima part of the trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment