20 May 2010
Day 5: New from the Old
Posted by Roland under: Travel .
With me and Tom now settled in a business hotel in Hiroshima, while we shared a cramped room to ourselves, at the very least we had our own comfy beds. However, we did not account for the fact that someone else had decided to set the alarm in our room for 6:30AM so we would fumble around to figure out the setup to turn off the alarm. While Tom would be able to go back to sleep, I was unable to do so, setting up another early wake up day for me.
I would head down for the free hotel breakfast, only to redo it a few minutes later when Tom was ready to head out for the day. Free food in our systems, now our plans were to head for Miyajima, actually much earlier than we had first planned. Since the weather forecast said there would be morning showers we would delay our trip to Miyajima. But the weather looked dry enough so we pushed out for the station and took the ferry out to Miyajima relatively early.
A cloudy day would be found at Miyajima unfortunately, so while it kept the temperatures cool, it meant that there wouldn’t be any sun to make our pictures that much better. While we had briefly thought about heading up to Mount Misen, the highest point in Miyajima, the fact that it wasn’t that clear pretty much eliminated that idea. When we got to the shrine with the floating gate, we discovered that high tide would not be until 2PM and it was only around 10AM when we got there. Eager to get a picture of the floating gate when it wasn’t obviously drenched in the mud, we would decide to wander around the island to distract ourselves with some other sites until high tide.
In the end we would pretty much wander all around the lower part of the island, from the residental areas, to temple complexes higher up in the hills. There were definitely interesting sites to be seen and it was still interesting for me since we were actually seeing new parts of the island I hadn’t seen before in my two previous visits. Unfortunately, the aquarium and the “panda dolphins” that Tom really wanted to see happened to be undergoing a rebuild and was closed until next year. Just no luck for Tom this time! What bad timing.
Tired from miles of walking, we settled in for a meal featuring oysters, a speciality of Miyajima. Tom would have oyster udon while I, of course, would have oyster ramen. That would continue my streak of having ramen everyday, something I was confident I would be able to continue tomorrow in Fukuoka with Hakata Ramen being their speciality.
After tasty oysters, we would have momiji manju (maple leaf shaped cakes filled with usually red bean) as a snack, sampling another local speciality. By this time high tide was almost in at the shrine so we entered the shrine proper, although we were a little disappointed to see that high tide did not mean it was at the maximum height possible, Tom surmised it had something to do with seasons, that high tide in May may be different from high tide later in the year. So we took the best of the pictures we could as well as seeing a bit of a wedding ceremony going on at the shrine (I had seen one at the last visit with Ajay too…quite a few going on!). Must be quite the couple if they were having a wedding at one of the most popular shrines in Japan. Might be a bit weird though when you have loads of tourists and elementary school tours going through your ceremony though.
Back in Hiroshima we would rest up before, for lack of anything else to do, wandered an electronics department store in Hiroshima before going back to the same okonomiyaki place we went to last night (again for lack of anything else to do). The owner was jovial just as before and me and Tom mixed it up with some fancier orders to our okonomiyaki. Still delicious as usual and I handed off a momiji manju that I bought for the owner as thanks for him giving me the Hiroshima Carp cheer sticks the night before.
To finish off our lack of anything else to do night, me and Tom would blow some more money on pachinko (I’m about to give up on the damn thing) and then wander the shady streets of Hiroshima (lots of aggressive bar peoples) before we just decided to drink some chu-hi at the hotel to call it a night.
account for the fact that someone else had decided to set the alarm in our room for 6:30AM so we would fumble around to figure out the setup to turn off the alarm. While Tom
would be able to go back to sleep, I was unable to do so, setting up another early wake up day for me.
I would head down for the free hotel breakfast, only to redo it a few minutes later when Tom was ready to head out for the day. Free food in our systems, now our plans were to
head for Miyajima, actually much earlier than we had first planned. Since the weather forecast said there would be morning showers we would delay our trip to Miyajima. But the
weather looked dry enough so we pushed out for the station and took the ferry out to Miyajima relatively early.
A cloudy day would be found at Miyajima unfortunately, so while it kept the temperatures cool, it meant that there wouldn’t be any sun to make our pictures that much better.
While we had briefly thought about heading up to Mount Misen, the highest point in Miyajima, the fact that it wasn’t that clear pretty much eliminated that idea. When we got to
the shrine with the floating gate, we discovered that high tide would not be until 2PM and it was only around 10AM when we got there. Eager to get a picture of the floating gate
when it wasn’t obviously drenched in the mud, we would decide to wander around the island to distract ourselves with some other sites until high tide.
In the end we would pretty much wander all around the lower part of the island, from the residental areas, to temple complexes higher up in the hills. There were definitely
interesting sites to be seen and it was still interesting for me since we were actually seeing new parts of the island I hadn’t seen before in my two previous visits.
Unfortunately, the aquarium and the “panda dolphins” that Tom really wanted to see happened to be undergoing a rebuild and was closed until next year. Just no luck for Tom this
time! What bad timing.
Tired from miles of walking, we settled in for a meal featuring oysters, a speciality of Miyajima. Tom would have oyster udon while I, of course, would have oyster ramen. That
would continue my streak of having ramen everyday, something I was confident I would be able to continue tomorrow in Fukuoka with Hakata Ramen being their speciality.
After tasty oysters, we would have momiji manju (maple leaf shaped cakes filled with usually red bean) as a snack, sampling another local speciality. By this time high tide was
almost in at the shrine so we entered the shrine proper, although we were a little disappointed to see that high tide did not mean it was at the maximum height possible, Tom
surmised it had something to do with seasons, that high tide in May may be different from high tide later in the year. So we took the best of the pictures we could as well as
seeing a bit of a wedding ceremony going on at the shrine (I had seen one at the last visit with Ajay too…quite a few going on!). Must be quite the couple if they were having
a wedding at one of the most popular shrines in Japan. Might be a bit weird though when you have loads of tourists and elementary school tours going through your ceremony
though.
Back in Hiroshima we would rest up before, for lack of anything else to do, wandered an electronics department store in Hiroshima before going back to the same okonomiyaki place we went to last night (again for lack of anything else to do). The owner was jovial just as before and me and Tom mixed it up with some fancier orders to our okonomiyaki. Still delicious as usual and I handed off a momiji manju that I bought for the owner as thanks for him giving me the Hiroshima Carp cheer sticks the night before.
To finish off our lack of anything else to do night, me and Tom would blow some more money on pachinko (I’m about to give up on the damn thing) and then wander the shady streets of Hiroshima (lots of aggressive bar peoples) before we just decided to drink some chu-hi at the hotel to call it a night.With me and Tom now settled in a business hotel in Hiroshima, while we shared a cramped room to ourselves, at the very least we had our own comfy beds. However, we did not account for the fact that someone else had decided to set the alarm in our room for 6:30AM so we would fumble around to figure out the setup to turn off the alarm. While Tom would be able to go back to sleep, I was unable to do so, setting up another early wake up day for me.
I would head down for the free hotel breakfast, only to redo it a few minutes later when Tom was ready to head out for the day. Free food in our systems, now our plans were to head for Miyajima, actually much earlier than we had first planned. Since the weather forecast said there would be morning showers we would delay our trip to Miyajima. But the weather looked dry enough so we pushed out for the station and took the ferry out to Miyajima relatively early.
A cloudy day would be found at Miyajima unfortunately, so while it kept the temperatures cool, it meant that there wouldn’t be any sun to make our pictures that much better. While we had briefly thought about heading up to Mount Misen, the highest point in Miyajima, the fact that it wasn’t that clear pretty much eliminated that idea. When we got to the shrine with the floating gate, we discovered that high tide would not be until 2PM and it was only around 10AM when we got there. Eager to get a picture of the floating gate when it wasn’t obviously drenched in the mud, we would decide to wander around the island to distract ourselves with some other sites until high tide.
In the end we would pretty much wander all around the lower part of the island, from the residental areas, to temple complexes higher up in the hills. There were definitely interesting sites to be seen and it was still interesting for me since we were actually seeing new parts of the island I hadn’t seen before in my two previous visits. Unfortunately, the aquarium and the “panda dolphins” that Tom really wanted to see happened to be undergoing a rebuild and was closed until next year. Just no luck for Tom this time! What bad timing.
Tired from miles of walking, we settled in for a meal featuring oysters, a speciality of Miyajima. Tom would have oyster udon while I, of course, would have oyster ramen. That would continue my streak of having ramen everyday, something I was confident I would be able to continue tomorrow in Fukuoka with Hakata Ramen being their speciality.
After tasty oysters, we would have momiji manju (maple leaf shaped cakes filled with usually red bean) as a snack, sampling another local speciality. By this time high tide was almost in at the shrine so we entered the shrine proper, although we were a little disappointed to see that high tide did not mean it was at the maximum height possible, Tom surmised it had something to do with seasons, that high tide in May may be different from high tide later in the year. So we took the best of the pictures we could as well as seeing a bit of a wedding ceremony going on at the shrine (I had seen one at the last visit with Ajay too…quite a few going on!). Must be quite the couple if they were having a wedding at one of the most popular shrines in Japan. Might be a bit weird though when you have loads of tourists and elementary school tours going through your ceremony though.
Back in Hiroshima we would rest up before, for lack of anything else to do, wandered an electronics department store in Hiroshima before going back to the same okonomiyaki place we went to last night (again for lack of anything else to do). The owner was jovial just as before and me and Tom mixed it up with some fancier orders to our okonomiyaki. Still delicious as usual and I handed off a momiji manju that I bought for the owner as thanks for him giving me the Hiroshima Carp cheer sticks the night before.
To finish off our lack of anything else to do night, me and Tom would blow some more money on pachinko (I’m about to give up on the damn thing) and then wander the shady streets of Hiroshima (lots of aggressive bar peoples) before we just decided to drink some chu-hi at the hotel to call it a night.