Miyajima island

If you are visiting Hiroshima,  make sometime to visit Miyajima island. 

Setouchi inland sea contain a lot of island, but Miyajima is one of the most famous and easy access island.

You will notice somethings in the island and may wonder why.  Here is some FAQ about Miyajima island. 

1  Why there is a lot of deer?

Miyajima’s deer is wild animal and we are not  supposed  to feed them.  

 The latist count said there is about 500 living on the island and about half of them live in residensial area. 

Historically, deer is treated well in the island that they are not afraid of people. 

Once in a while, we have seen deer swim across the ocean so they might come and go between island and main land. 

2 Why Rice scoop everywhere?

Since Miyajima island is God’s island,  a lot of thing is prohibited. 

Farming is one of the thing(because whole island is the body of god that you can not hurt it) thus there was not much 

industry in the island. 

The monk Seishin was concerned about the situation and try to invent some wood craft item as a speciality of the island. 

So  the rice scoop of this shape was invented.   It was huge hit as a souvenier from the island. 

Japanese eat rice everyday and rice scoop from the island is considered lucky item. 

It had developted as lucky charm since then, so there are many sizes and message available. 

3 Why maple?

Miyajima is famous for Maple (momiji).   Maple tree is the symbol tree of the island. 

Basically, just we have a lot of maple tree all over the island. 

Maple cake (momiji manju) was created because of it.  

We needed something that associated with our symbol tree.  

The sweet chef from miyajima’s oldest Ryokan (Japanese style hotel) Iwaso has created this sweet. 

4 When is the last ferry?

The last ferry to main land is 10:14 PM .  Do not miss it.

5 Where should we eat?

My reccomendations are 

As a street food,  1 Age momiji (deep fried maple cake), 2 grilled oyster 3 Nigiri-ten (deep fried fish cake) 4 Oyster Curry Pan

5 Croissant Momiji

Restaurant  1 Yakigaki no Hayashi (oyster rice)  2 Miyajima bruwary(Miyajima beer and Japanese-Italian Food)

3 Anago meshi Wada(Eel rice)  4 Miyajima syokudo (kids frendly Japanese dished) 5 Kurawanka (okonomiyaki)

Q5 is only the opinion of me Yuko、a staff at okeiko Japan