Miyajima Island, Hiroshima, and Himeji Castle

You can check a few more World Heritage sights off my list today!

From a cable car over Mt Koya to a ferryboat across Hiroshima Bay, I’m finally starting to feel a little crazy for saying “it’s all in a day’s fun”! I’ve been called “hardcore” more times than I can count for traveling to Japan by myself, navigating the public transportation system without knowing the city, and oh yeah, being in a country where I don’t speak the language! All I can do is laugh and be appreciative. I think it’s one of the best compliments that a backpacker can receive. ☺

I arrived at Miyajima Island around 5 o’clock, which gave me time to check out the Itsuku shrine (the island’s real namesake). The Itsukushima-jinja is listed as a World Heritage sight for its “floating” torii. The gate entrance to the shrine is accessible by land during the low tide, but the both the torii and the jinja appear to be floating on water once the tide rolls in! Since I was staying on the island, I was lucky enough to get to see it during the day and the night. It’s beautiful when it’s floodlit at night!

A little mishap with the hotel dinner cost me a nighttime trip to the Peace Park in Hiroshima. Apparently, if you tell them your order isn’t right, it will take about 2 hours to cook you a new one! The good news is that it was fresh as can be – and I got a high-class meal for free for my troubles. Well, “free”. I would have loved to see the Peace Park monuments lit up at night! Instead, I settled for a walk around the island to cool off and ended the night in the 100% natural onsen (spring bath of mineral water that is heated naturally) in the basement of the hotel to warm back up. It was exquisite, and quite relaxing. In order for the minerals to take full effect, you’re not supposed to rinse off after you get out of the water. I came out looking like a lobster (from the heat!) and I was hoping I wouldn’t wake up with some strange skin condition. Lucky for me, everything turned out okay!

The next day, I got up early for breakfast and some souvenir shopping. I rounded out the morning with a visit to the Peace Park in Hiroshima. There were all kinds of things to see there. There was the A-Bomb Dome that was almost directly under where the bomb detonated, the Cenotaph that contains names of all the known victims of the bombing, the Flame of Peace, the Children’s Peace Memorial with thousands of paper cranes, and a mound memorial that houses the ashes of those who died. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to go into the Memorial Museum, but I was glad I got to see what I did!

My last detour for today was the Himeji Castle, also sometimes known as “white heron” to the people. It was a magnificent white plastered castle overlooking the city of Himeji. It was surrounded by hundreds of sakuras (cherry blossoms) and a park. I was there at the end of the day on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and I guess a lot of people had the same good idea. For the first 20 minutes of my tour, it was smooth sailing. <> Then, I was herded for over an hour just to get to the top of the main tower. I have never seen any tourist site so crowded in my life! A few seconds after I (finally!) got to glance out the highest room of the highest tower, the guards made everyone scurry back down the stairs. I feel really bad for the people who stood in line that long behind me and didn’t get to see the top! The view from the castle was gorgeous, and some places looked like a sea of sakuras… or a snowstorm when the wind was blowing!


Getting back to the train on time from Himeji Castle involved a 1+ km run. Words cannot describe how glad I was to sit down for my four-hour ride back to Tokyo!