Our final destination for the Japan trip was Miyajima Island.

After quickly making our way through the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, we rushed down to the ferry terminal, parked the car and boarded the ferry for Miyajima.

Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, it was already dark.

We quickly checked into the Ryokan and ordered our dinner. The region around Miyajima is famous for its oysters, so naturally our meal included some fried and grill oysters. These were very nice indeed.

As expected from my previous experience at a Ryokan in Hakone, the food was presented beautifully. Just look at the pictures!

A Ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn, so the room was decorated accordingly. While we were at dinner, the staff came to our room, moved the furniture around and setup our beds on the staw tatami.

After dinner we decided to make the most of our time and take a walk around. Miyajima island is deserted at night, and as it hasn’t changed a whole lot since ancient times, it can be quite scary! its like a ghost town!

Up early the next day,we took another walk around as we had to leave by midday to make it back to Osaka for our flights. The Japanese breakfast at the Ryokan was again presented beautifully, and equally tasty.

We spent the rest of the time walking the town before leaving this beautiful place.

Well, that concludes my writeup on our trip to Japan…..

now…. back to writing about portraits and weddings!

I’ll try keep this entry short; I think I went a bit overboard on the Osaka post.

The last two legs of our trip (its really 1 single leg but I’ll separate them) were Hiroshima and Miyajima Island.

We were to do both these destinations in 2 days and be back in Osaka by 7pm for our flight back to Sydney.

The drive to Hiroshima is supposed to take 3.5hrs from Osaka.. Unfortunately we hit a major traffic jam 10 mins out of Osaka and the trip ended up taking closer to 5.5hrs. But once we hit the open road it was smooth sailing.

Let me quickly say that Japanese GPS systems are GREAT! they cross reference telephone directories, so if you want to goto a destination, simply enter its telephone number in!

Interesting how there was a lot of roadworks going on but they don’t have the 40km roadworks speed zones as we do in Australia.. Its much better this way as it doesn’t cause traffic jams on the highways.

Arriving at Hiroshima later than intended we were really strapped for time. We could only spare 2 hours at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum; I could have easily spent 4 in there. Walking through the museum there was an eerie silence… You could feel everyone’s mood as they made their way through the exhibits.

By 6 we had to get to the ferry wharf to make our way across to Miyajima Island. I’ll talk about Miyajima in my next post.

On the way back, we stopped off for some Hiroshima Okonomiyaki… food… yum!! Apparently the unique thing about Hiroshima Okonomiyaki is that they put soba in them… I’m not complaining.. it was delicious!

I forgot to mention the picture of the guy watering the plants.. that was funny so I had to take a pic.. it was like straight out of an Austin Powers movie!!

For most of our trip we stayed in Osaka and travelled via train to wherever we wanted to visit. So naturally most of our time was spent where we stayed, in the Namba area.

If the truth be known, the main reason why I keep on going back to Japan over and over again is because of the food. I find I want to eat and try as much as I can while I’m there.. even if I’m not hungry!

I had been to Osaka before so already had a list of “must haves” before the plane even touched down…

I’ll try and explain some of the images in the order that they appear in the gallery below.

We touched down at around 6.30pm and by the time we had found the hotel and settled down it was close to 9pm already.

Osaka is famous for its Takoyaki, so first thing was to have a serving of those! by this time it was close to 10pm and we hadn’t had dinner yet, so it was straight to the closest crab restaurant. I was so busy stuffing my face that I didn’t take pictures of all the dishes we had. The sushi with the brown paste is Kani Miso.. not for the faint hearted.. but I love it and tried to order it everytime I had sushi.

Another thing that I ate a lot of was Ramen. During my stay in Namba, I tried as many Ramen shops as possible. I believe I have found the best two easily assessible shops.

“Four Sky King” is right in the heart of mall area and I rate this place very highly. Just looking at the soup you can tell this is gonna be a serious bowl of Ramen. The soup is so rich and flavoursome but not overly salty.. excellent. I ate at this place multiple times!

The bridge over the water at Namba is always jam packed full of people; at night it becomes a place where people come to perform. During my stay I saw a rock band play, a magician perform tricks and a solo dance act using a crystal ball… Very talented!

The second Ramen shop in the picture set I also rate very highly. It is famous for a pork rib ramen where the rib is served whole but the softbones are so soft that it melts in your mouth.. Once again, the soup is thick, rich and flavoursome.. I don’t have words to describe the interior decoration of this shop, other than “seriously cool!”

I wish there was ramen this good in Australia….

Next up, Lawson is a very popular convenience store spread all over Japan. This quickly became one of my favourite shops!!! I found myself going to Lawson everyday to buy rice balls or pre made ramen dishes… this is especially good when stocking up on food for long train rides…. oh and beer… beer is so cheap in Japan that I drank it everyday. Convenience stores need to be like this in Australia!

Next up is a Japanese BBQ beef meal I had (Yakiniku). The restaurant was called Matsusakagyu Yakiniku (that is, Matsusaka Beef BBQ).

I’m not sure if Matsuska beef is the best beef in the world, but its definately the best beef I’ve ever had!

I had dined here before on previous trips and its so good that this trip we dined there twice! Just look at the marbling in the beef. Once again too busy stuffing my face to take pictures of all the dishes. The last two dishes are a rice porridge and Warabi with black sugar for dessert.

The last pictures in the set are just some random sushi pics and some shops that I thought had a really classic fitout. And the ramen picture is from a place called “Golden Dragon”.. Its actually quite good. Soup is lighter than my other two favourites, but its very tasty.. best thing is, this shop opens 24×7!

This post has been a bit of an essay, but I hope you enjoyed reading it!

Try not to drool while you look at these pictures.