Our final trip in Hiroshima prefecture was to Itsukushima island and shrine. Sometimes, you hear people call the island Miyajima, which means shrine island, because it is said that the entire island is a shrine. This is pretty unique in Japan. Perhaps the reason it has been made famous to tourists outside of the country is because the Torii, which is usually the gate leading to or at the entrance of a shrine, is often in the middle of the water. It cannot be on the island itself because the entire island is the shrine, so the entrance must be before you arrive at the shrine. I’m bad at explaining it but I hope that makes sense to anyone who doesn’t know of the shrine. I recommend you look it up if you’re interested because there are much better sources for such information.
We went to Itsukushima via a 10 minute ferry. It was very easy and convenient to get to. I’m typically bad with boats as I get awful motion sickness, but this boat was large enough, the water was calm enough and the ride was short enough for me not to have to worry. On the island itself, there were many people and lots of deer. Despite the signs everywhere telling people to respect and not touch the deer as they were sacred to the island, most people were ignoring these signs. Half of the time, the deer looked like they didn’t want to be bothered and that was really sad, but the other half of the deer used this to their advantage, snatching ice creams and treats from the hands and bags of tourists wherever they could. One deer actually snuck up behind us as we were chatting and looking at the water and took Sammy’s bread out of our bag, which was going to make up his tea on the bullet train that evening. The bag wasn’t even wide open, nor was it far away from us, sitting between the two of us almost touching our hands even. It was a little scary actually at the time, feeling borderline aggressive when Sammy tried to save the things in our bag, but now I just think it’s hilarious. We saw so many people get their food stolen out of their hands after the bread incident too! They are like seagulls I guess in that way. So just know that, if you’re going to Itsukushima, you have to watch your food at all times, not just by keeping hold of it, but by keeping watch for the deer!
Also, we were very lucky that the gate was in the water when we arrived because, after about half an hour, the tide went out. Not only did this not make the most aesthetically pleasing pictures of the torii but also, because the water wasn’t there to stop them, it made swarms of tourist crowd round the bottom. It was next to impossible to get a nice view, looking through the gate. I literally don’t understand why so many people thought they would get a better picture stood next to the leg of the torii, rather than from a far where you can see the entire thing, but I guess the gut instinct of “getting closer means better view” won over logic in the brains of literally hundreds of people that day, any probably every day on Itsukushima. It both physically and metaphorically was the best example to me of why we should take a step back to get some perspective at times.
On another note, Sammy and I had been looking out for some nice Omamori since we arrived in Japan. We’ve been to many shrines over the years, so have seen many, but the deities of Itsukushima really spoke to us. Not in a physical like “talking” way, but like we liked their messages and stuff and it felt right in our hearts. So, we bought one in a golden/yellow colour to help us with the next stage of our studies (a journey I’ll talk about some other time, but that we’re both embarking on this year) and a larger, light blue one for good fortune in general. We now carry these basically everywhere with us and it not only reminds us of this blessed trip we had with Ellen and Michael, but of Itsukushima and of the life we have built together. We feel very thankful.
