Welcome to one of my favourite days on earth. But forgive me, the details are incredibly fuzzy because all of this happened almost a year ago.
I’ll be honest — if it weren’t for the famous floating torii, I would’ve never considered going to Hiroshima. But I had a sightseeing checklist (despite this, I did not go to Fushimi Inari Taisha. Let’s not talk about this), and making a trip to Hiroshima would mean getting more use out of our very expensive JR pass. So that was how it was decided.
Warning: It actually takes about an hour to get to the Itsukushima-jinja from the Hiroshima city centre. Your life will be much easier if you don’t try to do Hiroshima as a day trip.
To get there, you first take a train from the city to the station that will connect you via ferry to Miyajima Island. The Itsukushima Shrine (a UNESCO heritage) is on that island, but there are lots of other things you can also explore.
The moment I was on that boat and could feel the wind in my hair, I was already sold on that trip.
It’s an exciting moment when you first see the torii from the boat, and lots of people will be swarming to take photos. I didn’t pretend to be holier than thou and I joined in on the swarming. No regrets on my part (but mostly because I remember almost nothing).
There’s quite a walk when you first get off the ferry to when you finally arrive at the shrine. The entire Miyajima Island is huge and some people do day trips on Miyajima alone! If you’re feeling fancy and you have the dough for it, I’m sure spending a night in one of the accommodations they offer would be a wonderful experience.
Because we weren’t made of dough, we had to keep moving for our target.
On our way, we were distracted by some delicious-smelling grilled octopus so we had to buy it. There were also a lot of little shops that would tempt you to buy your money. Not sure if we fell prey to any of them except for this octopus. It was enormous and more than enough as a snack for two people. It was nice and chewy, also very messy.
Now if you want to experience the floating torii magic in full, you have to plan this part well. We did no planning at all because we hate planning, so we left it up to the heavens. Luckily, after a couple hours being there, it reached low tide and we could walk right up to the torii and touch it. I think on the internet somewhere you can look up a tide schedule so you can time your arrival to the island appropriately so you don’t have to wait.
The sad part about low tide is the shrine isn’t as magical because it’s not floating in water anymore.
To tell you how happy we were to be there, we spent basically the entire afternoon there where the only things we did were walk around the shrine and take lots of photos.
Unfortunately I have no tips or suggestions for you because again, I remember nothing. All I know is it was worth the trek.
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