Miyajima: my favorite day?

Miyajima was certainly one of my favorite days, if not my favorite day of the trip. Was it the zodiacs in to shore? Was it the traditional dance performance in a magical setting? Was it the enjoyment I was getting from the participants? Was it the adventure with my fellow hosts? Maybe it was a combination of them all. So let's share.

Miyajima is a tiny island in the Inland Sea. We motored over there directly from Hiroshima. It's regarded as a shrine to nature (which probably tells you a lot about why I liked it so). It was a short ride via zodiac from the ship to the shore, where we then walked about fifteen minutes, almost traversing the island, to get to the site of the performance. (I like zodiacs too -- we used them a lot in Galápagos, but this was the only time on this tour.) On the way, we passed numerous shops and restaurants in the commercial zone.

 This is a local delicacy called okonomiyaki. One of the tour managers told everyone about it and the reports were very favorable. Leslie doesn't like cabbage, so David and I planned to share one. You have to try the local delicacies, right? Sadly, we tried too many that afternoon, and by the time we got back to these restaurants, we just couldn't face a plate of egg and cabbage and meat and vegetables and whatever else. Next time.

 Yes, fish cakes. I assume they are fish mixed with batter and poured into molds to make the maple leaf shape, which is common on the island. In fact, we had an adventure on that....

 The island is also well-known for rice scoops. Since most of my friends don't make much rice, I bought some of them chopsticks. But this is, apparently, the world's largest rice scoop.

 No idea. They were outside a restaurant and I liked them.

 This is the commercial street. Isn't it charming? So much to see and do....

 Miyajima is also known for its oysters. But the culinary prize? Momiji manjū. These are little cakes with a filling, in the shape of a maple leaf. You can watch these machines in a number of shops. They come in all kinds of flavors (chocolate, cream, cheese) but the most common is bean paste. Fascinating.

But we didn't have time to dally now -- we had tickets and it was nearly show time! So we ushered everyone along.

 Which is hard to do when it's so beautiful! 

 Yes, there's a shrine, and so there are deer. I liked this one walking by the lion.

 Torii gate marking our entrance to the formal grounds of the Itsukushima Shinto Shrine.

 Stone lanterns line the shore.

 And there it is! The floating vermilion torii gate. This one was built during the 6th century and enlarged in the 1100s to its current size. It's 53 feet high, and seems to float on the water during high tide, which was a bit before we arrived. It's quite beautiful.

 One of the purification spots on the way into the shrine.

 I just liked this sign. So polite.

We were here for a specially-arranged performance of the traditional bugaku dance. This is an 8th century ceremonial dance performed to traditional court music. In the day it would have been performed at a temple or at the imperial court. Our guides had to chase away others who wanted to join us in the inner circle. I hope they could see something from their sections, because it really was a treat. This is one of the reasons I do these tours -- like Sado Island later, it's not something you can just arrange to do on your own.

 Not just beautiful, but a magical setting too, with the water and torii gate behind.

We took group pictures after, which, as you can imagine, takes a bit of time with five groups and 100 people. Then people had the option to return to the ship for lunch or stay in town to dine and wander. Since a number of passengers were staying, we three hosts decided to stay too. We thought we'd first wander up to one of the temples, as many folks seemed to be going that direction, then find lunch and do some shopping.

 Sake containers, tribute to the shrine. Lovely paintings on their fronts.

We wandered up the hill to the Daisho-in Buddhist temple. No fee, but how can you resist this plea?

 They say that if you spin these golden prayer wheels that you will receive great fortune. We spun every one we passed. Spinning them somehow equates to having read them.

 We never did find the hidden cave of Buddhist icons, but we did love this Buddhist garden. 

 Buddhas with knit caps are sponsored. People often do this to remember loved ones who have passed.

By this time we were hungry! So we picked a place at random and had lunch. No surprise, it was tasty. Then we went across the way to a tea shop to try some of the maple leaf cakes. We did it wrong. We bought them and went to sit at the tea tables to eat them. In fact, it became a running joke for the rest of the trip how we always managed to do whatever it was not in an offensive way yet just a little bit wrong. Ah Americans. Then we declined the stuffed buns, being too full, and started doing some souvenir shopping, comparing notes with participants we saw, and enjoying the company. Some of the group, we learned, went to visit an onsen, one of the natural thermal baths.  

 We headed back toward the water, and the tide was out! So now we could walk out to the shrine. It's even more impressive up close, especially when you look at the tidal difference. Basically those first horizontal bars are covered with the high tide.

Making our way back to the commercial street, we thought about the okonomiyaki but had to say no. We did a bit more shopping. Then David spied it -- a sign for a cooking class to learn how to make momiji manjū. The class was to start in five minutes, and go for 45. We had 1.5 hours to get back to the ship. How could we resist?

 Our wonderful instructor spoke about twenty words of English. With our (combined) total of about ten in Japanese, we were set! Thankfully she knew the key words of slide, turn, and stop, and sign language gets you very very far. Unfortunately, we couldn't do things like ask what was in the batter.

 We worked two stations between us, doing eight with bean paste and four with dark chocolate. Look, we did it!

 And you can see that we really were having a blast!

 There's this great little machine that does all the packaging for you.

 She gave us nice little bags to take them home, as well as a "treat," which was a package of square cakes with, I think, moche in the middle. Or did she say they were chewy?

 And as you can see, they make twenty varieties of these little cakes! 

Back at the ship, we learned that 80% of the passengers stayed ashore -- a record! But it was such a lovely place, the weather could not have been more perfect, and after the rain the day before, well, I wasn't really surprised. What I thought was more interesting were the rows upon rows of oyster barges that we passed....

That night we would be leaving the Inland Sea and heading for the Sea of Japan, so those susceptible to motion sickness were warned.

One of the many little islands dotting the Inland Sea. Such a beautiful place.