The south: fifth stop Miyajima

The island of Miyajima is located inn the bay of Hiroshima. This island is famous because of its shrine and its nature. The day we went there, the weather was very unpleasent. We first took a train and then a ship.

The fog was very dense so that we could not see the island until we were really close.

I found very nice the floating platforms for fishing oysters (above). When we were getting closer, the Torii (arch or gate that always precede a Shinto shrine) of the Itsukushima or Miyajima shrine appeared as it was floating on the water.

The shrine was build on top of a wood colonnade, then, when the tide comes in it looks as it would be floating on the water, as well as the torii. On the other hand, when the tide goes out, one can walk under the gate and see the "legs" of the shrine.

During the going out of the tide, one could walk over some nice flat stones that crossed the way to avoid the water. The only problem was, that sometimes, there were traffic jams...

And when the tide was already gone..

The island is full of mountains and Buddhist temples. Close to the shrine there was a complex from which you can see here pictures of the five-story pagoda surrounded by very strange trees.

And also fauna:



There are free deers (and monkeys that we did not see) in the island. The deers have sacred character and roam freely like in the city of Nara (close to Kyoto).













It is believed that a monk of Miyajima invented the wood spoons that Japanese use for serving the rice. In one of the temples many of them can be seen, even of giant size. There are also typical souvenirs for tourists.









It did not stop raining and it was very crowded. We changed then our way and went to the mountain to one of the other Buddhist temple complexes. Actually it was a great idea, we enjoyed it a lot. I am not a religious person but i have to recognize that the place was really "spiritual".

On the way up we had a lot of companions, such as Buddhist saint or deity sculptures, small wrapped warm Buddhas, others funny figures doing different things, even "Anpanman" was there! I would like to mention briefly about "Anpanman", he is a superhero very popular among Japanese children (the comics are sold since 1968 and since the eighties there are animated cartoons). His head is made of bread (in Spanish "pan") filled with anko, therefore his name. When he meets hungry people, he offers them his own head until he looses it completely. Then he flies back to the patisserie, that his patissier makes him a new one, a bit surrealist, isn't it?

The temples and the shops had ornaments hanging at the edges of the roofs that worked as drain of the rain water.

After so much moving up and down, we got hungry. We gave us the pleasure of trying the local oyster (absolutely recommended) accompanied of a glass of sake.

It was the culmination of a very nice excursion.