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.