In our sixth blog saw us say goodbye to Takamatsu and move on to our next destination. We are actually moving further north to Shin-Osaka, but for the day we had an excursion planned to go further south to visit the famous Itsukushima floating Tori Gate Shrine on Miyajima Island as for the last 4 years it has been surrounded by scaffolding for renovations.
So, we had an early start up at 6:00am to catch our first train at 7:08am which was the Marine-Liner from Takamatsu station to Okayama arriving 8:15am then we had 10 minutes to navigate to the next platform to catch the 8:25am Hikari Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima. We arrived in Hiroshima at 9:04am. The day before in the evening we visited the train ticket office and reserved our seats for the train journeys which are free with our JR pass.
For ease of moving around for the day we then stored our cases in a storage locker which cost 700 yen per large locker for the day which is approximately £4…These lockers are very handy.
Our next train was a more local train to Miyajimaguchi, but before catching this train we went into the Hiroshima train ticket office and reserved our seats for the return journey later in the day to Shin-Osaka. We found the platform to catch the local train to Miyajimaguchi station which is on the San’yo main line taking 27 minutes. From there we had a short walk to catch a ferry over to Miyajima Island where the Tori Gate is located. Using our JR passes allowed us access on to the ferry without having to pay which just speeds everything up. The ferry was packed with Japanese tourists (very few westerners, no English) as it was a Japanese National holiday and as said the scaffolding and covers have recently been taken down.
The view from the ferry was fantastic on the way over as they manoeuvre the ferry in such away you get a bird’s eye view from the sea of the Tori Gate Shrine as they approach the landing. The ferry crossing had taken approximately 10 minutes then it was a lovey picturesque walk along a beach promenade towards the Tori Gate with the Tori Gate always in our sight.
Here is a little bit info about the Tori Gate Shrine…
The Isukushima Shrine is centuries old, the island was formally known as Itsukushima, but is now more popularly known as Miyajima, which means Shrine Island, thanks to the shrine’s iconic attraction, the floating tori gate. The shrine and it’s tori gate are built over water at high tide making it unique, as it looks to be seemingly floating in the sea. When we visited, it was low tide which meant we could walk right up to the torii gate and get a good look. Also due to the low tide they were letting visitors walk over the scaffold bridge and under the gate, which of course we did which was a great experience to see the gate so up close.
For now, we let the pictures do the talking.
Final note…Leaving the Miyajima Island and the Tori Gate our return was a reversal to Hiroshima Station to catch the Shinkansen bullet train to Shin-Osaka our next destination. The distance from Hiroshima to Shin-Osaka is 173.7 miles which had taken 1 hour 25 minutes traveling at times 185 mph. This is the equivalent in the UK of traveling from Edinburgh (Waverley) to Manchester which is 175miles and takes 3 hours 11 minutes!
In total we walked just over 7.3 miles.
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Stephen and Anthony
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