Hiroshima and Miyajima

I arrived in Hiroshima in the evening yesterday and decided to go to bed early as I am only spending three days here and I plan to be out for most of them. While hanging out in the hostel, someone suggested that I should take a ferry to an island close to Hiroshima called Miyajima. I took their advice and decided to explore the peace park and museum tomorrow. I am glad that I took their advice because Miyajima is one of the coolest places that I have been while traveling. It is an extremely small island but is the home of Mt. Misen and the Itsukushima Shrine. So I kinda lied about not visiting any more temples or shrines!:) The Itsukushima Shrine extremely cool. When it is high tide, the gate of the shrine is completely submerged in water and by the time low tide occurs, you can walk out on the sand and go up to the gates. Also, since the island itself and shrine is seen as sacred, there are various wild deer that wander around that you can take pictures with and hang out with. They walk right up to you! After seeing the shrine and exploring the town itself, I decided to hike up Mt. Misen. It took me about an hour and a half to get up the mountain but the view at the top was spectacular! By the time I hiked back down the mountain, It was sunset and low tide. I took some cool pictures of the gate and got some Okonomiyaki for dinner. Tomorrow I am going to explore the Hiroshima peace park and the various museums and memorials at the site.

View from the top of Mt. Misen

Shrine at high tide

Shrine at low tide