One More Temple!

I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms so I found a place I could get a good 'fix'!

Before I satisfied my cravings I went over to the Peace Park to see if I could get any pictures which didn't have loads of school kids in them. It was about 8.30am and there were school groups around, but not that many. I got the pictures I wanted and then decided that I'd make a detour via the museum. I'm glad I did as it had lots of interesting stuff to see and gave a reasonably balanced history of the lead up to the bomb being dropped.

I left the museum and the sun was really shining brightly and starting to warm the day up – it's supposed to be the start of the rainy season but the weather in Hiroshima has been fantastic.

I walked to Hiroshima station and got the train out to Miyajima-guchi. From here I took the short ferry trip over to the island of Miyajima.

Miyajima is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is most famous for the Itsukushima-jinja temple. In particular the orange torii (shrine gate) is apparently one of the most photographed sites in Japan. The torii is surrounded by water at high tide and does look pretty cool. A couple of other things of note are the deer that roam about (they're supposedly wild but you wouldn't know it as they walk amongst the tourists), and the world largest rice paddle (scoop) is here!

After my temple fix I grabbed some lunch – local conger eel – and then got the ferry and then train back to Hiroshima.