Day 11: Kyoto, the cultural capital
We are now halfway through our trip and so far it's been absolutely amazing. The places we have stayed and the food we have eaten have greatly contributed to this grand little adventure of ours. Today we leave beautiful Miyajima Island and the Yamaichi Bekkan Welcome Inn to go on to our next destination, Kyoto, the cultural capital of Japan.
Arrival in Kyoto
From Miyajima-guchi station we took a train back to Hiroshima's main station and the Shinkansen towards Kyoto. The journey took about an hour and a half. When we got to Kyoto it was completely unexpected. As a modern city it is a urban sprawl with architectural clashes between the old traditional buildings and the newer ones. The new buildings as well as layout seems like something you would find out of a movie. The streets are clean but everything else feels very stark, no swooping curves from the traditional buildings and nothing like London either. As I've only just arrived, that's my first impression however tomorrows exploration of the city will provide me a better insight I believe than what I've encountered today.
Still we took a taxi to where we are staying. As much as we wanted to go explore, today is meant to be a rest day, especially after the trekking we've done in Miyajima. This doesn't mean not doing anything though! We visited some of the local shops, did laundry and watched the samurai drama channel which whilst we didn't understand it was still interesting to watch!
Tomorrow we will be going around Kyoto at what may be a pretty intense pace with our guide. More to come soon!
Day 10: Exploring Miyajima and Cherry Blossoms
Miyajima is one of the most beautiful places we have visited since leaving Hakone. It lies just a ferry ride from Hiroshima's Hiroden-Miyajima-guchi. There are lots of deer walking freely between tourists and local people. They almost seem domesticated in the sense that they don't fear people but they go where they want to. They also don't mind people touching them however for the unwary they may walk up to you and nibble on your shirt (like they did to Jose!)
You can read Jose's thoughts on today here.
We were out exploring for around ten hours walking through the shopping areas, along the beach, up stairs to the various temples across nature trails and finally up the mountain using the ropeway. By the time we got to the top I was exhausted.
Daisho-in Temple
Daisho-in is not just one building but several buildings serving various purposes. It is also within the world heritage area that covers the mount mizen and Ikutsushima shrine.
Shishiiwa Station is at the top of mount Misen and despite being so high I didn't feel worried at all.
Whilst I have tonnes more to say, we'll be leaving for Kyoto in the next 2 hours so time to start packing once more! I'll try and update this a bit more later. For now here is one of the night shots for you to enjoy.
Day 9: The road to Miyajima; Hiroshima
Today we travelled from Osaka on the Shinkansen to Hiroshima. All the trains leaving before noon was fully booked so we had to queue up for the reserve car and the queue was terrible! By the time the Train had opened up it's doors the queue had almost tripled. Luckily for us me and Jose managed to get a seat, some of the business people had to stand up for the 90 minute journey.
Hiroshima
Well known for it's tragic history Hiroshima is a beautiful place now full of kind people carrying out peaceful lives. The landscape is not at all what I imagined. In some ways the atmosphere reminds me of Broadstairs and Ramsgate in England.
I came across this worn engraving with what used to be letters and whilst what it means is lost on me it may be a tribute to those who perished. There are so many things it could be.
The worn engraving above makes the below image more meaningful which is deeply engraved in granite so that it will take (as the geological expert Jose predicts) thousands of years before it wore away. The scripture here labels what the A Bomb dome is and the hope that as a peace memorial they would strive to rid the world of nuclear weapons and never forget that purpose. Before today I have never seen an engraving so deep and I found it very moving that they should wish the script to stand the test of time and the elements to remind all of their determination.
Miyajima
After a long 90 minute ride to hiroden-miyajima-guchi we finally took the ferry across to Miyajima as the sunset and it was absolutely beautiful. I took many photographs here and none do the landscape justice which could have been taken from a painting.
The ferry was quite small compared to the ones in London however I thought they were quite nice.
We will be exploring Miyajima tomorrow and running around petting deer, climbing mountains and taking more photos as usual.