Day 6 – Planes, Trains and Automobiles!

Travel day! Boy, Emily wasn’t kidding. Today was spent in cars, planes, busses, subways, bullet trains and a ferry!  We started off our day meeting a pre-ordered jumbo cab (because we are a jumbo group) at 8am to head off to the airport. We got to the airport in plenty of time, but Em had to run in and grab money at the ATM as the driver only took cash! We checked in (had to check two bags because of weight) and made it through security easily.  By that time, everyone was hungry.

The amount of food we bought at Dunkin Donuts would make a sumo wrestler blush! But that turned out to be a good thing, because it would be HOURS before we’d eat again!

A very quick plane ride from Busan (55 minutes) and we were in Fukuoma! As we were landing, I was realizing that it was going to be a very tight turnaround to catch our bullet train. After a quick run through customs, we exchanged our dollars for Yen, got one SIM card for Emily’s phone since they were so expensive, and ran for the shuttle bus to take us to the subway.

On the bus, Emily realized we were not going to make the bullet train we had booked a month back. I assured her it would all work out. We made it to the subway and onto the main train station.

Once in the station, she and Steve talked with the ticket people and they exchanged our tickets for the next train leaving in just 20 minutes. It was perfect! We caught that train and had a lovely 1.5 hour ride on the bullet train. Boy does it go FAST!

 Once off the train, we headed to the subway. Unfortunately, we had a few missteps as we were rushing to get to Miyajima as quickly as possible…and when you rush, you make mistakes. After a few turnarounds, we found ourselves at the ferry! By this time it was 3:00 and I was very grateful for the huge breakfast at the airport. A quick ride on the ferry and we were to the island. It was SO HOT. I was glad the hotel was very close to the ferry. After 7 hours of traveling in 95+ degree heat, we were ready to sit and cool off.

But…we were also hungry. So the sitting didn’t last long. We dropped off our stuff and headed out.  The first thing you notice on Miyajima are the deer. They are everywhere. Some people feed them, many take photos of them. They lay around under the trees and walk down the streets. They are very used to people. We wandered around until we found an adorable little sandwich shop on the market street.

We had drinks and small sandwiches as we knew we’d be eating again in an hour. We shared scrambled egg sandwiches and cucumber and ham sandwiches. They were so tasty!





We wandered the market a bit and bought some things, then came across a fortune teller machine. Emily put a quarter in and got her fortune. It was quite extensive. 

After that, we headed over to walk around the famous Tori gate and see the Itsukushima Shrine. Unfortunately, the gate is under renovations right now, so there was a lot of scaffolding around it. We were able to walk out near it as the tide was out. Emily and Peter enjoyed seeing the hermit crabs in the water. 

We then bought our tickets for the Shrine and headed in. It’s very spread out, and when the tide is in, it’s completely over water! It’s beautiful. I took a lot of photos.

One of the first things you have to do when you arrive at a shrine is dip a cup into water and wash your hands. We had to do it at the shrine in Korea, and we had to do it here too. I think we'll be doing it a lot in the next few days.

After we were done, we dipped our feet in the wonderfully cool mountain water in a canal just outside the Shrine. We then walked around looking for dinner. The first place we chose had no one in the restaurant (it was tiny and you were supposed to sit at a grill…which seemed hot anyway…but seriously there was NO ONE in there!) So we left and found another place overlooking the water. 

It was wonderful! Steve and I had Shrimp tempura Udon, Andy had beef Udon, Emily had the soba noodles (cold noodles) and Peter won with Okonomiyaki. We all tried it and decided we have to order this again in Kyoto. It was SO YUMMY!!

 After dinner, we headed back to the Sakaraya (the hotel) for the public bath “experience.” First, we put on the robes they gave us, and Emily added the Hapi. I added a Hapi later. We went down to the public bath and enjoyed a nice cool shower and a hot tub (girls on one side, boys on another). It was so nice to be clean after sweating off half of our body weight today! The boys were done before us and Andy totally passed on the bath (“I’m not doing anything with the word HOT in it!”) Emily forgot to tell us to bring our towels from the room, but other than that it was a lovely experience.

We played some cards in our room and enjoyed the maple leaf cookies that Miyajima is known for (we had five different flavors to choose from.) After that, we headed off to bed (the kids were next door with their own futon beds). 

Speaking of bed, these beds were futons on tatami mats. You have to take off your shoes when you enter the room. They give you slippers if you really want them, but the mats are very soft. With the beds on top, the entire experience is very nice and soft.  We had en-suite bathrooms in both rooms, but boy were they tiny! If one was on the toilet, it was hard for another to get into the shower. Everything is so compact and efficient. Even the shower head was attached to the sink so you only had to turn on the sink and then divert the water to the shower head.

We were all exhausted from our travel day, so bedtime came early. What a day! But we did get to see everything Emily wanted us to see on the island, even if we arrived two hours later than she had originally planned. Gotta go with the flow!