Miyajima

After the morning in Hiroshima I took a ferry to the island Miyajima. I decided to split today’s post in two because it didn’t seem right to combine it with the Hiroshima post. Miyajima is now officially one of my favourite places in Japan. Miyajima is absolutely gorgeous. First thing off the ferry and I find deer EVERYWHERE! There are warnings not to feed them, and to hang onto any souvenirs and tickets you want to keep as they will even eat paper and take it from you.

Deer crossing the street

Oysters growing

Oysters are a speciality here and there are a lot of shops selling grilled oysters in the shell.

Oyster I found in the sand... edible?

Apart from oysters, Miyajima is also known for bamboo rice paddles and Momiji Manju, a sweet waffle shaped like a maple leaf.

Oh and also for the o-torii gate and Itsukushima Shrine.

The Itsukushima Shrine is a wooden building sitting on stilts over water in an inlet. At the entrance of the inlet sits a large O-torii gate. During high tide everything looks like it’s floating on the water, but at low tide you can actually walk right out to the O-torii gate. Which I did and was pretty much frozen from the cold, so you should probably appreciate these pictures more knowing what I had to go through. 😉

Coins people leave at the gate.

Inside the Itsukushima Shrine

The O-torii gate from the Itsukushima Shrine

Lights go on at sundown and the o-torii gate is illuminated

I decided that even though I was freezing to wait until sundown to see the shrine illuminated. Totally worth it even though I couldn’t feel my fingers. Then made a slow walk back to my accommodation, even spotting more deer along the way lying down in the garden beds. Sadly it was much too dark to take a photo. But they were so cute.

Because it’s the low season and all the shops close early I booked dinner with my Ryokan. It was an amazing meal, more than I was expecting for a Ryokan dinner. So now here is the food porn.

Cooked fish, prawn and fish cakes with what I think is a kind of milky tofu.

A sashimi platter, what I’m pretty sure is Garfish (Thanks Gemma) and octopus. Amazing and fresh with a beautiful texture and flavour.

The island speciality, oysters. Cooked in butter with a garlic crumb. Soooo good and I don’t normally like cooked oyster, but these were so fresh.

Grilled beef topped with pink peppercorns and mushrooms. Amazing beef. I don’t think it was wagyu but it was very high quality beef and I loved the sweet peppery flavour the pink peppercorns added.

This had the texture of mashed potato, but I think this was a Renkon (lotus root) dumpling in a thick broth. It was actually really tasty and the texture was unexpected.

A fried rock fish with lemon, salt and fried peppers. I love fried fish so tried to pick this fish as clean as possible. Delicious!

Probably my least favourite item. It was a toasted rice ball with umeboshi in the middle in a soup. I am not a big fan of umeboshi and I was getting full at this point as well. I ate half of it to leave room for dessert.

Fruits with vanilla and green tea ice-cream. Perfect wait to finish off the meal along with a cup of tea. The meal cost 3650 yen at the Kikugawa Ryokan in Miyajima. kikugawa.ne.jp/

Gochisosama deshita!