Miyajima, or literally, “shrine island” in Japanese, is perhaps most famous for being the home of Itsukushima Shrine and its Grand Torii Gate. While most visitors will stop at Itsukushima Shrine, the island actually has many more beautiful shrines to offer as well as luscious forests and hiking trails. If you’re visiting Hiroshima, Miyajima makes for a great day trip, or overnight stay.

You can get there by a variety of ways – there is a ferry that departs from the Peace Park area as well as a ferry that departs from Miyajimaguchi Station, about a 30 minute train ride from Hiroshima Station. The ferry from Miyajimaguchi is honestly a very relaxing and scenic ride. I highly recommend it!

Your first stop in Miyajima should be Itsukushima Shrine, as it gets very crowded with tour groups later in the day. We arrived around 8am and had most of the shrine to ourselves. Itsukushima Shrine is a Shinto shrine dating back to the 6th century. When visiting, I highly recommend checking tide times, as your view and experience will be completely different at low and high tides. At high tide, the gate looks like it’s floating out of the water. At low tide, the water drains out of the bay, and visitors can walk right up to the gate.

We visited on the tail end of low tide, so you can still kind of almost walk up to the Grand Torii Gate. It was honestly really cool to see the Grand Torii Gate as well as the Shrine itself at low tide, as everything was visible. By the time we left several hours later, it was pretty close to full high tide, so we got to see the “floating” aspect of the Grand Torii Gate as well. There’s a walking path to the right as you exit the Shrine that makes for great photo ops as well.

After visiting the Shrine, we grabbed a snack at a local restaurant. We had the most amazing matcha kakigōri, or shaved ice, at a local restaurant along the walking path.

We walked along the main shopping streets for a little bit, checking out the local Miyajima snacks. They’re well known for their maple leaf shaped Manjū, which makes a great gift to bring back home. We also found some delicious Grand Torii Gate shaped sable cookies to bring back as souvenirs.

Another popular destination on Miyajima is Mount Misen. At 500 meters above sea level, Mount Misen (弥山) is the highest peak on Miyajima. There are three hiking trails that take you up Mt. Misen. The Momijidani Course is the shortest, but also the steepest, as it goes mostly through the forest. The Daisho-in Course offers the nicest views and is also the least steep. The Omoto Course is right in the middle. Regardless of the course you pick, it takes about 1.5 to 2 hours to reach the summit. There is also a ropeway that goes up to the top, called the Miyajima Ropeway. The Ropeway was closed on the day that we visited, so definitely check before you go!

If you’re visiting Miyajima as a day trip, make sure you check when the last ferry departure is! There are two ferry companies that run ferries from Miyajimaguchi: JR West Miyajima Ferry and Miyajima Matsudai Kisen. The JR West ferries run the latest – I believe the last one leaves at 10:15pm while the Miyajima Matsudai Kisen ferries end at 8:45pm.