2015 Golden Week travel from Miyajima to Awaji①

2015/05/03 - 2015/05/06

We travel from Miyajima to Awaji by rent car on this Golden Week. We decided to move to London on this July, so it would be the last long travel in Japan until then.
I long wanted to see Miyajima, fascinating red shrine gate in the sea, and also would like to show Westin Hotel Awaji to my husband.
So, I decided these 2 destination and checked availability and access on the way.
I reserved a month before, but I could make reservations of hotels and car.

We could see and experience many different things from Tokyo area and had pretty nice times.

エリア 宮島・厳島神社(広島)

• 同行者: カップル・夫婦
• 交通手段: レンタカー ANAグループ
• 旅行の手配内容: 個別手配

We rented the car at Hiroshima airport and directly headed to Miyajima. I heard the parking lot on the seaside usually would be crowded and then we tried to find the parking lot on the mountain side. Luckily, we could find a car going out from it and immediately we could park.
This is the vending machine for ferry boat to Miyajima.
(First I thought it would be better to take boat from Hiroshima port because the road to Miyajima guchi seems very very crowded, but the price from Hiroshima port to Miyajima cost more than 3000yen for round trip and less frequency, so decided to go to Miyajima guchi. But it was right choice. Even it only cost 360yen!)

From boat, we could see the red shrine gate already.

There is a statue of Taira no Kiyomori in the entrance of the island. He was a very famous leader in the late Heian period. I am from Zushi, next city from Kamakura, where the government opened by Minamoto no Yoritomo in the year 1192 ("iikuni", we learned to remember this year with a sound means nice country). The Taira family is a rivalty of the Minamoto family, so because of my area, I only knew well about the Minamoto family story. My image of The Taira family was more closer to aristocrats class (Kuge).
He and his clan donated copies of Buddhist sutras to the Itsukushima Shreine (it is from the comment under the statue).

Same as the Nara park, there are some deers and follow the tourists with food.

On the streets, we found the signboard written "Grilled Oysters". Ohhh, yes Hiroshima is famous for oysters. We are Kaki (oysters) lover and we joined the queue without hesitation!

The main streets was full of people and we walked down the side road and found the pagoda with fifth stories (Gojunoto). It is in the Toyokuni shrine, main temple building called "Senjokaku" (1000 tatami place), because it is 857 tatamis spaces at that time of built, ordered by the one of most famous military general, Hideyoshi Toyotomi in 16 century.

We can enter the main temple with 100yen donation. This building construction finish uncompleted because of Hideyoshi's death.

After eating grilled oyster, we were getting hungry. We left early in the morning after only light breakfast and it was almost 12 o'clock. But it was so crowded, and every restaurant had long queue to get in. When we were almost giving up, we found a restaurant even close to the Itsukushima Shrine without the queue. Actually there was a queue, but not to the restaurant, for buying grilled oysters outside. This queue looked like to enter the restaurant, so many people missed this place, we guessed. This restaurant name was "Torii" ( The Shrine Gate). We ordered a bottle of local beer, 2 plates of 6 grilled oysters and bowls of rice.

It was our dream plate! Grilled oysters! It costs only 1360yen, we cannot get this kind of plate in same price in Tokyo. The taste was also amazingly better too. So fresh and juicy. I would love to eat this everyday!

We needed to queue up a little bit to get the tickets, but it only took a few minutes.

The Itsukushima Shrine was registered the World Heritage. This shrine related strongly to the Hei (Taira) family. The current temple was constructed after the middle of 13 century. But the red shrine gate was made in Meiji Era, not so old:P
We went and see it in low tide, and even we could walk to there easily.

It is the photogenic guardian dog with bright green color in the forest.

It is "Soribashi"　(The warping bridge), which constructed in mid 16 century. We cannot walk on it, anyway seems quite steep (steeper than the bridge in Kamakura).

It was the low tide when we visited it. I saw its pictures with only high tide and feel a bit strange. But it is still beautiful and unique.