Hey Hive!
If you missed the last couple of posts, we're recounting our trip to Hiroshima back in April 2019! Sean had won some free air tickets to Hiroshima from a lucky draw sponsored by one of the local banks in Singapore, DBS! Since we've never been, we decided that was a good chance to explore the Chūgoku region!
So last week, we started making our journey to an island called Miyajima, which is famous for being the shrine island with the Itsukushima Shrine, and having a huge torii gate in the middle of the ocean! They even had lots of wild deer there just chilling on the ground.
We took a ferry there and explored the shrine a little bit last week but there's still so much more of the island to explore so here we go!
11 April 2019. Thursday.
After we took a crap ton of pictures with the gate that looks like its floating on high tide, we go to the other side of the island and explore the shopping street instead!
Here's the map of the whole island btw:
We actually passed a little bit of the Omotesando shopping street on the way from the ferry terminal but we walked past it on the way to the shrine so we went back to check out the shops there.
There were a lot of souvenir shops that had some cute deer merchandise like these deer hats!
There was this huge souvenir shop with a stand selling their local specialty momiji-manju, which is a buckwheat and rice cake shaped like a Japanese maple leaf, and is unique to the island!
There were a lot of tourists there so we just took a look before moving onto the other stalls. We were actually quite surprised to find so many elderly people there.
There was also this snack shop selling the fried version of the momiji-manju that looked and smelled really good!
I think this was the local specialty; the deep fried sponge cake. They even had different fillings you could choose from such as smooth bean paste, custard cream, cheese, peach, mashed bean paste, green tea and even chocolate!
But they also had a Hiroshima specialty - deep fried minced fish and onion:
There was quite a line but it looked tasty and I'm always in the mood for something savoury so we queued up to try it.
The stall had an semi-open kitchen with a glass partition so we could see them frying the cakes on the spot.
Our orders were served these cute little wicker baskets hot and fresh!
So we ordered one each; the sponge cake and the minced fish and onion! They smelled soo good and were really hot since they were just fried.
We tried the smooth bean paste version of the fried sponge cake since that was the standard flavour. I think the texture was interesting since it was soft on the inside but crunchy on the outside. It wasn't too sweet either which was good. But I think I'm too used to fried stuff being savoury that it confused my taste buds.
And this was the inside of the deep fried minced fish and onion, which actually tasted very similar to a crab cake tbh. But it was really good! I definitely enjoyed this one more and even Sean did too despite him not liking fish stuff much.
This stall was actually part of a larger souvenir shop that thankfully also had seats so we could sit and enjoy the fried cakes. But they also had a lot of different souvenirs on display for sale like food products, utensils and wooden crafts.
And of course there were these deer themed merchandise too like these cute handcrafted wooden deer figurines!
After we finished our cakes we left the shop and continued our stroll down the shopping street.
We saw this very interesting shop with lots of different Buddha statues.
And there was also this store that I thought was initially selling some medicine or something but turns out it's eel steamed buns! That advertisement looked pretty funny and kind of nostalgic though.
Some parts of the shopping street were quieter than others, but they still had some interesting wares.
There was even a drink stall selling some alcoholic drinks and cocktails! They looked kinda expensive though for such a small cup if not I would've tried the hot lemonade.
But just opposite the drink stall was this sandwich place that looked and smelled pretty good! So we decided to try one.
Here's their menu, which had quite a mix of sweet and savoury sandwiches. Initially I thought it was just a dessert shop but the savoury options definitely intrigued me.
We decided to try the Hokkaido Croquette sandwich since that was definitely looked the most filling and after those fried cakes I was craving more fried stuff. Also the crunchy croquette would provide a nice contrast to the soft buns.
It looked and smelled so good! and the croquettes were really tasty! It wasn't as crispy as the fried cakes we had earlier but still really yummy! I think there was some spicy BBQ sauce on there as well which was nice so it wasn't dry.
Overall, it was definitely a very delicious snack! And it gave us more energy to walk around the island!
We started making our way back to the shrine again so we could go see the pagoda and the park on the other side of the island.
The tide was slowly receding so people were starting to head down to the shoreline to take pictures closer to the gate. It wasn't quite there yet though so we went to explore further before coming back.
Not too far from the shrine, we arrived at the Tahoto Pagoda! It wasn't very tall but it was on a man-made hill so it was higher up and easily visible from further away.
We came across more snack stalls here including this very tempting ice cream stand!
But it was getting kinda cold out so it felt too cold for ice cream at the moment. This stand was actually part of this classy looking cafe though.
There were also these market stalls that gathered quite a crowd! I think they were selling more fried snacks but I'm not sure what was so special about them.
Since we missed out on going up the Ropeway up to Mt. Yokohama when we went to Iwakuni to see the curviest bridge Kintaikyo, we decided to go check out the Ropeway here which would take us up to Mt. Misen at the top of the island!
But I think we'll leave that for next week's post! So tune in next time for that! Sorry for the cliffhanger but this post is pretty long already.
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #154 (Hiroshima): Sailing to Shrine Island? Oh Deer! ⛩
