Miyajima + party in Hiroshima!
My second day in Hiroshima I had to change hostels because the one I was at the first night was full. Turned out to be the best thing that happened to me, but I’ll get to that later. I decided to go to Miyajima and see the famous “floating torii” there. The torii (entrygate to the temple) is there because back when it was built, peasants could not set foot on the island, only the monks could, they had to enter the temple directly from the water, sailing through the torii in the boat and right up to the temple. Now that is only possible at high tide, I was there at low tide when you can walk around the torii on the sand/mud.
It’s a pretty cool and unique temple and torii, the view would’ve been better if it would’ve been high tide but then I wouldn’t have been able to walk up to it. They have deer in this town to, like Nara, it must be something in old temple districts. You couldn’t feed these though and there were warning signs up about people being bitten, from what I could tell they were just ignoring the people.
I ate lunch at a variety of street vendors on the island, fried cuttlefish, a conger eel bun and some little sponge cakes with custard in them to round it all off. There is a mountain on the island with a cablecar going up it that is meant to be a great lookout but the clouds were so low I couldn’t see the top of the mountain so I didn’t bother with it. All very good, then it was back on the ferry, and train to Hiroshima.
Now back to the hostel.
I noted in my Kyoto entries how the hostel there was the best I’ve ever stayed at. Well it’s a small chain in Japan, and they were just opening one in Hiroshima. On this very day, so I booked it the night before and showed up at 11:00 in the morning before my day excursion to drop off my bag and check in. I was told that I was the first customer, no one else had arrived for the night yet and that there was going to be a party that night in honor of the opening.
Party meant, for the 10 of us that decided to join the staff, free dinner with sushi and okonomiyaki, sake and beer. There was one Italian, one Norwegian a group of Irish girls, a couple of English guys, three Americans and a French guy who took it upon himself to make sure no ones drink was empty. The owner of the hostel was there along with the entire staff of this hostel. Fantastic evening, which ended up with the owner taking us down the road to the local karaoke place. Karaoke is huge here, they are very into it, seriously into it. We were there until 3ish. Fantastic evening with some great people, a perfect example of how great staying at a hostel can be and how after a couple hours a group of people who have never met each other before are acting like they’ve known each other for years and all singing What’s the story Morning Glory together… One of the best parts about travel is meeting people and having experiences like that, wherever you are traveling to.
Thanks K for a great night, your hostels are the best!
Tags: Hostels, Japan, Travel
Adam
Aww, I was wondering if you had made any social interaction with your hostelmates yet!
Karaoke :drool: haha