The Dillers are in Japan!: Miyajima

Along with our friends Jeff and Ted, Joel and I took a day trip to Miyajima - one of the three most sacred/spiritual/religious places in all of Japan. It's half way between Iwakuni and Hiroshima, so it's only a 23 minute train ride away from us. We decided to go on Oct. 10th, since it was Columbus Day and therefore a federal holiday, thinking it wouldn't be that busy as the Japanese really have no reason to celebrate this day with us Americans. HOWEVER, it turned out to coincide with "Sports Day" which is a national Japanese holiday. Who knew? So it was quite busy, but AMAZING none the less!

Here's a sample of what the train schedules look like here. We're getting the hang of it now.

A map of Miyajima Island.

Basically, you hop off the train and roll out into a cute downtown area where you have to take tunnels under the road to cross over to the other side of the street. Straight ahead is the ferry which takes you to Miyajima island, only about a 15 minute ride across the water.


You can kinda see the oyster beds in the water. It's oyster season and oh how glorious it is!

The mountains here are simply stunning. Miyajima is known for the giant Torii Gate that was built out in the water. During low tide, you can walk under it, but we got here when it was still a little too deep. The Torii Gate is a symbol in the Shinto religion. Whenever you see one, you know you are about to enter some sort of shrine.


A view of the Torii Gate from the ferry.

Once we docked, we were able to walk straight through the super cute, historic downtown of Miyajima Island. There were SO many bakeries and places to eat! It was overwhelming! Joel and I ordered octopus tentacles and squid balls (dough balls, folks, don't get nasty!) from 2 local vendors.


I took the picture after we had eaten the really cool looking part of the tentacle!

Take note: deer are sacred in Miyajima. Therefore, they are the pigeons of the park. They were EVERYWHERE and so people friendly! They would snatch your food when you weren't looking (one successfully ate the wax paper from my squid balls) so you had to hold things high and keep looking over your shoulder for the little buggers.

Don't let the cuteness fool you. They were not soft and fluffy like Bambi. I definitely had to sanitize my hands after contact!

My fellow substance abuse counselor, Jeff, was very helpful in reminding me to keep my food elevated.

Moving on: We hiked over to the main shrine by the HUGE Torii Gate and learned that due to the sacred nature of the island, back in the day, they were not permitted to build anything on the land. So, they found a loophole and built everything over the water. The entire shrine was on posts, and during high tide it looks like you're in floating buildings. The construction was AWESOME.

Obviously NOT high tide at the moment.

There's that Torii Gate! Folks were starting to walk out toward it but couldn't quite make it yet.


There are a lot of Chinese influenced elements in Japan, especially with regard to the Shinto and Buddhist religions.

Next, we hiked up to a Buddhist temple. It was SO beautiful! Whoever comes to visit us here will be making a trip to Miyajima with us, specifically this temple. The setting is so serene and even if you aren't Buddhist, you feel close to God due to the simple beauty of your surroundings. I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures that depict several of the mini-shrines as well as the gorgeous scenery. Sadly, pictures cannot do this place justice.

Creepy.

The road up to the Temple.

The statues on either side were really big.

The little stone statue at the bottom of the pic was everywhere and he was different every time. Sadly, it reminded me of Stewie Griffin so I couldn't take it seriously. :-p

The car is a bit out of place. Hmmmm....

Postcard worthy.

HA!

Winnie the Pooh was a tad out of place. Still haven't figured this one out.

We picked a local restaurant to eat at that was grilling fresh oysters right outside the front door. Of course we ordered them as our appetizer, along with fried oyster curry and broiled oyster kaki don. These oysters are not your normal oyster. They are HUGE. And they are TASTY. And they are MEATY. Wow. Words cannot express.

Jeff's fried oysters.

Finally, we stopped at the Fish Doctor for a little foot work. Now, for those of you that know I hate feet, this was really hard but oh my goodness, was it fun! These fish love to eat dead skin. So we all paid for 7 minutes of foot work from the fish. Not kidding - all of us felt smooth and refreshed after our time was through!