Tuesday, 6 November 2012
The sixth of November 2012 will go down in history as the day Green Moon won the Melbourne Cup and Barack Obama was re-elected President of the United States. In Hughesy's personal iconography, on the other hand, I mightn't remember the actual date but I doubt I'll forget the experience of visiting Miyajima.
We were downstairs at seven looking for breakfast, only to be directed to the third floor, where we found a table with our room number laid out with a variety of Japanese breakfast comestibles, most of which I would have avoided under other circumstances, such as a Viking breakfast layout. Here, on the other hand, with a variety of platters things that I wouldn't have gone for under other circumstances worked off each other rather well, in much the same way as the previous evening's banquet had done.
With breakfast out of the way we were back upstairs packing and contacting the front desk to arrange a shuttle bus to Onoura station at 8:37 that would deliver us to the ferry terminal at Miyajima Port just after nine.
What we found after we'd safely deposited the Little Red Travelling Bag and Madam's backpack in a convenient coin locker was an example of the sheer weight of numbers involved with Japanese cultural heritage tourism.
The JR ferry we boarded wasn't quite packed to the gunwhales but wasn't far off it, and the ferries we saw headed across in the late afternoon were almost as packed. With three ferries operating a service across and back throughout the day that's an awful lot of folks headed to a significant site on a week day when there was nothing obvious (apart from autumn leaves) to draw them there.
Admittedly, a significant portion of the crowd were high school students in excursion mode, and many of the remainder were elderly Japanese formed into largish tour groups, but it was still a fairly significant number of travellers visiting the sacred island.
As the ferry neared the shore there was a predictable movement of seated passengers towards the port side railings for a first glimpse of the famous torii. from what I could gather the ferry's course would deliver a better and closer view on the starboard side, so that was whee I was headed, determined to find the optimum viewing spot for the closest approach.
Needless to say I was subsequently joined by most of those who had previously migrated to the port side railings, but at least this time I had the premium viewing spot.
Once we'd docked there was the inevitable exodus as a steady flow of people headed towards Itsukushima Shrine, which lies right behind the torii. It had been low tide about half an hour before, and most of the stretch between temple and gate was not quite dry land, so there was plenty of camera action from the headland and the exposed beach.
Miyajima means shrine-island in Japanese, a direct reference to Itsukushima, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the image most commonly associated with the island is the shrine’s floating torii gate set in the Seto Inland Sea.
The red-lacquered complex of halls and pathways that comprise the shrine and its torii gate are built over water and seem to float in the sea at high tide. The shrine’s buildings, including the prayer hall, main hall and a Noh theatre are connected by boardwalks supported by stilts, built so commoners could visit without defiling the ground by walking on it. Retaining the purity of the shrine is important and since 1878 there have been no deaths or births near the shrine. Pregnant women are supposed to head to the mainland as their time approaches, as are terminally ill or the very elderly. Burials are still forbidden.
The shrine’s structure is based on the idea that the island itself is sacred, so, in the days before mass tourism, commoners approached the shrine by water, steering their boats through the torii before approaching the shrine, built so it existed on the threshold between the sacred and the profane. Away from the shrine and its boardwalks nowadays paths take visitors around the inlet to the other shrines and temples on the island, and to the island's highest peak, Mount Misen, which has been worshiped by local people since the sixth century. The buildings have been destroyed and rebuilt many times, and the current design dates back to 1168, when Taira no Kiyomori, the most powerful man in Japan at the end of the Heian Period, selected the island as the site for his clan's family shrine.
That was the origin of Itsukushima and though the present shrine dates from the middle of the sixteenth century it follows the earlier twelfth century design. Near the main shrine a Noh theatre stage, built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the late sixteenth century, is used to honour to the gods, and act out key events in the mythic history of Shinto.
The torii and the view of the gate in front of Itsukushima Shrine with Mount Misen in the background is one of the Three Views of Japan (along with the sand bar Amanohashidate, in Miyazu Bay in northern Kyoto Prefecture and Matsushima near Sendai). There has been a gate in place since the twelfth century, but the current sixteen metre high gate, which dates back to 1875 is built from decay-resistant camphor wood with an extra leg before and behind each main pillar reflecting the style of Ryōbu Shintō, a school of esoteric Japanese Buddhism associated with the Shingon Sect.
Though the shrine and its torii float above the water at high tide, when the tide falls and the water drains out of the bay the torii can be approached on foot and visitors take the opportunity to walk out, view the gate from close quarters, place coins in the cracks of the legs, make a wish and gather shellfish to add to their miso soup.
That, more than likely, was what had been happening as our boat approached, but given the sheer weight of numbers in the era of mass tourism you'd figure shellfish would be few and far between these days.
I'd done a bit of research prior to our departure from Australia, and had pencilled in a lengthy walking tour around the temple precinct, starting at Senjokaku Temple, passing the Five Storey pagoda and a couple of lesser shrines and meandering around the mountainside Nature Walk before looping back to the main temple area.
Madam was determined to make for Mount Misen via the rope way, but the morning weather conditions made that idea a bit iffy, so we started with Senjokaku, where there were obvious preparations for something or other under way.
Senjokaku (Hall of One Thousand Tatami Mats) is the colloquial name for Toyokuni Shrine, originally built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (one of the three unifiers of sixteenth century Japan) in 1587, but left incomplete after his death. The nickname is a fairly apt description of the largest structure on Miyajima, which doesn't actually contain much apart from empty space.
According to a letter from Ankokuji Ekei, head monk of Ankokuji Temple, the intention was to build a Buddhist library in which the chanting of sutras could be held every month to honour those killed and wounded in times of war. The incomplete structure was left unpainted, and since the exact year it was built is known, the weathering of its pillars and floor boards can be used to determine the age of other wooden structures on Miyajima.
Senjokaku is, however, a slight exaggeration. The area of floor space is equal to a 857 tatami mats.
From there, once we'd reclaimed the footwear we’d removed so we could enter the temple we made our way past the 27.6 metre Five Storey Pagoda (Goju-no-to), built in 1407 and it restored in 1533, enshrining the Buddha of Medicine and Buddhist saints Fugen and Monju and into the back streets that would take us past Zonkoji, Tokujuji and Shinkoji temples on the way to a road the handy map had labelled the Nature Walk. Given the coloured leaves theme it seemed the way to go.
It was evident that the further you went from the main tourist areas, the less crowded things became, and by the time we hit the Nature Walk we had things more or less to ourselves.
The ramble through the foothills was a rather pleasant contrast from the bustling conditions a few hundred metres away, and the foliage was definitely on the autumnal turn, giving Madam a considerable degree of heartache due to the sunlight's continued refusal to play nicely and deliver optimal conditions for coloured leaves photography.
That meant, once we reached the point where a decision regarding the rope way needed to be made, the consensus was to head back into the throng rather than up the mountain. Still, once we were back with the crowd we tended to work away from the mob, heading for Daisho-in rather than the main temple complex. A five-minute walk from Itsukushima Shrine at the foot of of Mount Misen, Daisho-in is one of the most important temples of Shingon Buddhism.
Founded in 806 by the founder of Shingon Buddhism (Kūkai, known posthumously as Kobo Daishi), the temple was the first Buddhist shrine on Miyajima and features a variety of buildings, statues and religious objects including the Kannon-do Hall, the Maniden Hall, a sand mandala made by visiting monks from Tibet, a tea room, a cave filled with eighty icons representing the temples of the Shikoku Pilgrimage and a flame said to have been burning since the temple was founded. From the temple grounds, a hiking trail leads to the summit of Mount Misen, but the climb takes takes about an hour and a half, which effectively ruled it out as a serious possibility as far as Yours Truly was concerned.
In the middle of the steps leading into the temple, Dai-hannyakyo Sutra, a row of spinning metal wheels inscribed with Buddhist sutras can be turned as you pass, which is believed to have the same effect as actually reading the sutras themselves. As a result, without any knowledge of Japanese, you can benefit from the blessings the reading of sutra is believed to entail.
Given those considerations it probably comes as no surprise to learn I was giving most of the cylinders a good swirl on the way up.
Up to this point the emphasis had been on staying away from the crowds, and we only made our way into the really congested area when the prospect of lunch came to the fore.
On the way across there'd been a notable abundance of oyster beds, so even if I hadn't already been told the area around Hiroshima is famous for its oysters on the evidence I'd sighted earlier I'd have been looking for oysters for lunch.
And after ten days of set menus, salads, Japanese specialities and try this you might like it there was one thing I was definite about. I wanted oyster, the whole oyster and (almost) nothing but the oyster.
On a multiple basis.
We sighted what might have been a perfectly good and relatively uncrowned restaurant when we hit the main temple area on the way back from Daisho-in, and on first impulse I was inclined to stop there and get lunch out of the way. Madam, on the other hand, had sighted references to a couple of places that specialise in oysters. The problem was their location, bang in the middle of the bustling and almost overcrowded central shopping area. We passed one, noting a sizeable queue waiting to get in while oysters in the half shell were being grilled at the front of the eatery.
We came to a second, where there was also a queue, but a marginally shorter one. This one, I decided, would do, and as it turned out it did very nicely, thank you. Madam did her best to persuade me into a variation that would have given me half a dozen oysters in a variety of settings, but I remained stalwart, and relatively unmoved, conceding that I'd go for one lot of four grilled on the half shell, with another three crumbed and deep fried and a glass of Chablis on the side.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, the oysters I got were (a) huge and (b) bloody magnificent. Don't believe me? Here's the evidence.
With lunch out of the way we were left balancing two options. Madam wanted to get up to the top of Mount Misen, and we'd avoided Itsukushima Shrine earlier in the piece because of the morning's low tide.
Since it was around one, with a good hour and a bit to high tide it seemed like the rope way up to the top (well, not quite the actual top, but close to it) seemed like the way to go.
We made our way through the back streets to the point where you pre-purchase tickets, did that, noted the crowd waiting for the courtesy bus, figured we wouldn't fit on the next one and decided, in that case, there was no choice but too hoof it to the bottom station.
It's a good ten minute walk (seven, we were reminded along the way, if you run a bit) but with the backpack in the wake of the morning's extensive up hill and down dale scramble, there wasn't going to be much running and, in any case most of it is uphill and most of the uphill involves stairs that aren't always spaced to make them easy to climb when you've got my stride pattern.
Still, we seemed to have arrived at the base station before the courtesy bus, and joined the queue, underlining another positive reason for walking, and eventually found ourselves in a gondola with four Japanese girls, some of whom, as Madam informed me later, weren't too good on heights either.
Hughesy isn't particularly good on heights, but that had nothing to do with my spot with my back to the view for the ascent. When you're the last one in, you're generally not given much choice on where you sit.
Ropeways don't handle curves, and subsequently need to work in straight lines, so there's a station just under three hundred and fifty metres up a fairly steeply pitched slope where you change for the next stage, which for some reason involves larger gondolas with the majority of passengers standing up.
With my back to the view, I hadn't been able to see much and though, for the first bit I'd tried to turn around and admire the view that had everyone else marveling there was something in the girth department that made rotating the trunk difficult. Those considerations didn't apply on the second stage, which more or less travels above a ridge that leads to the summit, and was rewarded with a view across the other side of the ridge to the Seto Inland Sea that was nothing short of breathtaking.
Earlier in the day, Madam had been talking about going the extra distance and doing the twenty minute circuit from the second rope way station to the summit, where there are a number of temples and places of interest.
At the centre of Miyajima, Mt. Misen's ascetic status as a holy mountain site dates back to the autumn of 806 and the spiritual sites scattered around the summit, add another dimension to the panoramic views across the Seto Inland sea, though, obviously, we weren't going to be visiting them this time around.
A return visit without the lengthy ramble around the Nature Walk would probably allow us to get around the Seven Wonders of Misen, including the Eternal Fire (Kiezu-no Reikado) is said to have been burning for over 1,160 years, and is believed to be effective to cure all illness. It was used to light the Flame of Peace in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
As stated before, Madam was keen to go the extra forty minutes or so that would have taken us around the summit, but given the state of both pairs of legs she decided to give that a miss. After a photo session around the observatory at the rope way station we made our way back down, well and truly in time to catch Itsukushima at close to the best tidal conditions.
We didn't, however, get there in a hurry. The way up had taken us through Momijidani Park, by all accounts one of Japan’s loveliest fall scenes with a striking contrast as the red of the Japanese maples shows up against the deep green of the surrounding evergreen forest. We'd been intent on getting to the base station on the way up, but on the descent, with the urgency out of the equation, I dawdled as Madam took her time snapping away.
Back at the main shrine we found ourselves sharing the space with a number of school groups, and a throng of mainly Japanese visitors, and we're mildly bemused by the reaction to the No Photographs sign where you pay your admission. Not five metres from that point there were a bunch of high school boys blithely ignoring the message, but a glance further on revealed the flouting of apparent instructions wasn't a generational thing.
Everyone else was doing it, so we did it too, figuring that the No Photographs bit applied to the people in the ticket booths (well, they were about the only thing that wasn't being photographed) and deciding to limit my shots to ones showing the torii, and the general shape of the building, avoiding anything that might be considered sacred.
It seemed like a fairly common sense compromise.
From there, we could have continued around the bay to further temples and other points of interest, but by this stage the feet were aching, the muscles at the back of the legs were indicating that thy'd had enough and the crowds were getting to me, so when Madam suggested we head back to the mainland and move on to Hiroshima there weren't going to be too many objections.
We'd been on one of the earlier ferries in the morning, and with three separate services operating from Miyajima Port and a fourth bringing passengers from Hiroshima the flow of visitors had probably continues unabated through the day. By mid-afternoon, many of the visitors were thinking of heading in the other direction, so the ferries making the return trip were always going to be crowded.
I realized, as we stood at the end of a lengthy queue and watched another flow of incoming visitors leaving the vessel we were about to board, and another carrying a considerable contingent coming in to dock, that the flood of visitors might rise and fall through the day, but from the first service in the morning until the last one in the evening there's a steady stream coming in. People arriving towards the end are presumably booked in to one of the ryokans or onsens on the island, and are presumably there for the sunset.
Day visitors, on the other hand, are going to want to stay as long as possible and leave with enough time to reach their evening destination before dinner time which means that regardless of how crowded the boat was on the way over, it's going to be packed on the way back.
We're not talking absolutely packed to the extent that you see in news footage from Bangladesh Desh or Indonesia, where crowded ferries crop up in news bulletin footage, usually in the wake of some maritime disaster involving severely overcrowded vessels. But it's a situation where, assuming the licenced capacity of the ferry involved is 1250 passengers, the crowd, and the queue situation means they won't stop admissions to the vessel before 1249 and won't allow it to reach 1251.
I had momentary visions of the capacity limit being reached as Madam was allowed aboard with Yours Truly left behind for the following service, but we both passed the checkpoint, and headed aboard. She wanted to take a few more photos so I found a seat as she headed upstairs. There was one spare beside me but it was gone by the time she made her way downstairs.
Back on the mainland, with the Little Red Travelling Bag retrieved from the coin locker we headed across to the platform we'd arrived on and waited for the commuter train that would deliver us back into Hiroshima a good twenty-six or seven hours after we'd arrived.
That got us into the main station complex, and a shortish walk delivered us to the Hotel Urbain Executive, where we were spending the night. Don't be deceived by the title, though. It might have been Urbain, rather than Urbane, but it was another in the string of places we'd stopped that cater to the travelling salaryman trade, but it had one significant difference from the standard version.
Once you left the security of the lift that brought you to your designated floor you were in the open air, and remarkably crisp, fresh and breezy open air it was as we made our way to the room. It was sort of like a multi-storey version of the standard motel, with the units warped around a central space in a more or less triangular manner with open space looking down into the lobby where the car parks would otherwise have been.
Such establishments offer a variety of enticements to attract the business trade, and in this case the variants included free drinks (of the non-alcoholic variety, of course), for guests only, downstairs and a free laundry rather than the standard coin laundry. We had a load of washing that needed attention, so that solved the issue nicely, but the fact that she was outdoors as soon as she left the warmth of the room meant she won't be booking us in there again.
With the laundry done and dusted we headed off to dinner. Madam was determined to sample one of Hiroshima's trademark dishes, and steered us past a number of other possibilities into the station complex, where we found her preferred option was packed, and it's cousin brother further down the corridor was the same with a few more thrown in for good measure.
I wasn't over keen on what I was seeing as we'd gone past the first time, but if the Tour Director has set her mind on one particular format for dinner experience suggests it's futile to resist, so we inquired about space for two and were rewarded with a space at a bar at the rear of the premises, right beside (actually, left beside from the seated point of view) the cash register.
So if what follows appears to be a little jaundiced, consider my situation.
Having spent the day doing a lot of walking, much of it involving stairs and sloping paths, leg weary but not overly famished (the lunchtime oysters had left a little room in the stomach, but not enough to require a significant refill) seated in a crowded eatery on a stool that had my knees uncomfortably close to the eating surface. Every thirty seconds or so something said to my immediate left had me automatically turning my head in that direction (coincidentally, the one from which the food would be coming) every thirty seconds or thereabouts, and I wasn't keen on what I'd seen in preparation.
The meal, when it arrived, turned out to be a sort of pancake turned into a parcel containing noodles and whatever theme ingredient (beef, chicken, pork, tofu or, in this case, oysters) the diner chooses, with a healthy serve of a variant on soy sauce that is apparently widely enjoyed in Japan, but has very limited appeal as far as Hughesy is concerned.
Madam suggested if I didn't like the sauce, perhaps I should try a bit of this hotter variety, considerately adding some of the aforesaid variety to the platter. Fortunately, I chose not to respond to the the suggestion, since the response would probably have contained variations on four-letter expletives and the desire to get the sauce out of the dish rather than adding any more.
The addition, as it turned out, was a Chilli enhanced variation on the other one. The same flavour profile, but a bit more heat.
And the oysters were small, with the taste overpowered by the sauce.
There were places where we could stop for a drink on the way back, but I'd had enough. We passed two wine bars where the offerings seemed to be aimed at the segment of the market that was disinclined to spend and was after effect rather than taste, and while I could have weakened I want to drink something interesting in the wine department.
If I can't there's always beer, but in this case I wasn't inclined that way either.
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