We went back to Miyajima Island (宮島) again to visit the Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社) and take a walk around the Momijidani Park (紅葉谷公園). There are plenty of accommodations on Miyajima Island itself, but most are rather expensive. Instead we stayed at a hotel right next to the pier on the mainland, which was much cheaper but still easy to get back to the island.
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- Heading for the island again. Left most building is the Miyajima Coral Hotel (宮島コーラルホテル) where we stayed at.
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- Shops in Miyajima don’t have automatic doors – to block out curious deers.
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- These guys can be aggressive. This is one bit of food they took from a tourist’s bag.
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- “Floating” shrine
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- Seawater flowing into the ditches.
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- And there were lots of fish.
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- Momijidani Park (紅葉谷公園). Literally the red leaves valley park. A famous spot for autumn colour.
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- All these will become red leaves in autumn.
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- Toasted bun with ice cream filling. Simple but tasty.
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- Seems there would be a wedding ceremony at the shrine.
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- One last serving of grilled oysters.
Beppu (別府)
Leaving Miyajima, our original plan was to head straight to the southern tip of Kyushu, Kagoshima (鹿児島) and Yakushima (屋久島), staying for 3 nights with about 2 full day for travelling there. But a typhoon was looming from the south, and was poised to sweep directly over that very area. I had thought we were lucky starting our trip just after a typhoon the week before. And there it was another!
So we changed plans to make a stop at Beppu which is also in Kyushu but not so far south, this should give us some extra sight-seeing time before the typhoon hits. It was a bit out of the way – we would need to change at Kokura (小倉) station travelling east, and later return to Kokura again to continue to Kagoshima. But Beppu has some good places of interest, namely the Beppu Hell (別府地獄) and the highly rated Umitamago Aquarium in the nearly Oita City (大分市).
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- Taking the Shikansen from Hiroshima station to Kokura.
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- Arriving at Beppu on the express train “Sonic”.
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- Beppu is a famous hotspring town. There’s a hand bath right outside the station.
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- Toriten (とり天), i.e. chicken tempura, is the local speciality.