Forbidden Island

Trip Start Sep 25, 2002
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Trip End May 15, 2004


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Sunday, May 18, 2003

As part of my trip to Hiroshima, I took one day to travel to the island of Miyajima in the Japan inland sea. It's a beautiful island with great views, many shrines, monkeys in the mountains, and really tame deer that just lounge about in the shade of the trees (I have some good video of that). The island and its famous shrine, Itsukashimu shrine, was a forbidden place for over several millennia, with only the highest ranking Buddhist monks and political leaders allowed. It was built in 1168 and even those privileged enough to obtain a visit were not permitted to set foot on the sacred ground and had to approach the shrine by boat, pass through the torii to gain access to the shrine, and only allowed on the shrine grounds. Today, Miyajima is famous for having one of the three best views of Japan, a "floating" Shinto shrine torii (gate).

Anyway, I spent the majority of the time just looking around the shrine and taking in the magnificent view. Later, I went on a fantastic, yet highly challenging hike to the top of the island, Mt. Misen. I took the back way up the mountain, which turned out to be a grueling 60 degree ascent! But, the effort turned out to be well worth it because this left me seemingly alone on an island mountain forest, deep in nature and surrounded by beauty. I say seemingly alone because I thought I was alone, until at one point when I was literally surrounded by island monkeys! There were hundreds of them, but fortunately they were very docile and mostly just sunbathed or played chase! At the top of the mountain is a viewing platform with a 360 degree view of the island and the inland sea. Miyajima is surrounded by small islets, further enhancing the interesting and spectacular view. There was also a very old temple up there and I was able to catch an amazing Buddhist prayer and drum ceremony! I took a great video, but it's too large to upload to this site. Upon descending, I learned that the island is heavily affected by the tides. The high tide when I arrived had surrounded the main shrine and the torii with water, a situation I deemed normal. But coming down the mountain I found that the tide had gone out, leaving the shrine and torii with water-pocketed soft surface in which people are able to walk out upon! This was great as it allowed me to walk out to the gate and gage its true size. It's massive and the cool thing was all of the local kids came out to go crab and clamshell hunting in the shallow sea bed!
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