Hiroshima and Miyajima: The Peace Park, the Shrine Island, and How to Do Both in Two Days

Why Two Nights, Not a Day Trip

The arithmetic is simple. Kyoto to Hiroshima is about 100 minutes on a Nozomi and Shin-Osaka to Hiroshima about 80, so a day trip spends three to four hours on trains before you add the forty minutes each way to the island. What is left is a museum visited at a jog and a ferry caught with one eye on the clock. The Peace Memorial Museum deserves two unhurried hours; Miyajima deserves a tide, a shrine, a walk up or a ride up Mount Misen and a slow lunch. That is two days.

Two nights also puts you in Hiroshima in the evening, which is when the city is at its best: the okonomiyaki floors of the entertainment district, the riverside, and the Peace Park after dark, when the dome is lit and the crowds have gone. Every route of ours that stops here does it as two nights for these reasons, and forwards the big luggage to the next city so you carry a day bag onto the ferry.

Costs and Hours, From the Operators' Own Pages

Two things in that table catch people out. The Peace Memorial Museum opens at 7:30 — earlier than almost any museum in Japan — but the extended-hour time slots at the start and end of the day require an online reservation, so a walk-up at 7:30 may be turned away. And the ¥100 visitor tax on Miyajima is not optional or hidden: Hatsukaichi City levies it on every entry to the island and the ferry companies collect it with the fare, so the crossing costs ¥280 each way in practice, not ¥180. Preschool children are exempt.

The Peace Memorial Park

The park occupies the ground beneath the hypocentre, on the island between two rivers where the city's busiest commercial district stood until 8:15 on 6 August 1945. The Atomic Bomb Dome — the shell of the Industrial Promotion Hall, left as it was and now a World Heritage Site — stands at the north end, free and open at all hours. The Cenotaph, the Children's Peace Monument with its paper cranes and the Flame of Peace lie along the axis to the south, and the Peace Memorial Museum closes the axis.

Admission to the museum is ¥200 for adults, ¥100 for high school students and free for junior high school age and under. It opens at 7:30 every day and closes at 19:00 from March to July and September to November, at 20:00 in August, and at 18:00 from December to February; it is closed on 30 and 31 December and for a few days in the middle of February. Allow two hours, go early or in the last two hours to avoid the tour groups, and do not schedule anything demanding immediately afterwards. Most people want a quiet walk, and the river banks either side of the park are where to take it.

In August the park holds the memorial ceremony on the 6th and the lantern-floating that evening; our toro nagashi guide covers what happens and how to be there respectfully.

Miyajima: The Island Day

Miyajima is the everyday name for Itsukushima, the island in Hiroshima Bay whose shrine stands on stilts over the water so that at high tide the buildings and the Great Torii appear to float. It has been a sacred island for centuries — the shrine is a World Heritage Site — and it is also a small working town with deer in the streets, oyster grills on the approach and a mountain behind.

Getting there

From Hiroshima Station take the JR Sanyo Line to Miyajimaguchi, about 30 minutes, then walk five minutes to the pier. Two ferry companies cross in about ten minutes; the JR Miyajima Ferry is ¥180 one way for adults and ¥90 for children, accepts the Japan Rail Pass, and runs roughly every 15 minutes, so there is rarely a wait. The ¥100 Miyajima Visitor Tax is added at the ferry. The alternative is the Hiroden streetcar all the way from the station to Miyajimaguchi for ¥270 — about 70 minutes, slow and rather lovely, and the way to go back if you are not in a hurry.

On our routes this is a day with the IC card or the included rail: the budget route (BF004) has you take the local train and ferry with the card in your pocket, and the routes that include the Japan Rail Pass or JR legs cover the train and the ferry both.

Itsukushima Shrine, and the tide

Admission to the shrine is ¥300 for adults, or ¥500 combined with the Treasure Hall; ¥200 and ¥300 for high school students; ¥100 and ¥150 for elementary and junior high school students. It opens at 6:30 all year and closes at 18:00 from March to mid-October, 17:30 from mid-October to the end of November, 17:00 in December and 17:30 in January and February. The shrine is a different building at high and low tide — floating at one, standing on the sand with the torii walkable at the other — so look up the tide table for your day before you decide when to cross. Seeing both, a few hours apart, is the argument for giving the island a whole day.

Mount Misen

The mountain behind the shrine is the other half of the island. The Miyajima Ropeway — two systems in series, a circulating gondola then a larger funicular car — runs from Momijidani Park, reached by a free shuttle bus from near the shrine approach. Fares are ¥1,800 return and ¥1,000 one way for adults; the ropeway runs up from 9:00 to 16:00 and the last car down is at 16:30. From the upper station it is about half an hour's walk each way to the summit and the view over the Seto Inland Sea, so the round trip from the shrine is about two hours. The trails down through the maples are a fine alternative to the return ticket if your knees agree.

The approach street between the pier and the shrine is where the island eats: grilled oysters (the bay is Japan's biggest producer), momiji manju maple-leaf cakes, and conger eel over rice. In November the maples of Momijidani turn; our Miyajima autumn guide has the timing.

The rest of the island: Senjokaku, the pagoda and Daisho-in

On the hill directly above the shrine stand two buildings most day-trippers photograph and few enter. Senjokaku, the "Hall of a Thousand Tatami Mats", is the largest structure on Miyajima Island — a vast, unfinished timber hall begun in the 1580s and never completed, now Toyokuni Shrine, with a small admission fee and a floor you can sit on. Beside it the Five-storied Pagoda (Goju-no-to), built in 1407, is the vertical landmark you see from the ferry. Ten minutes' walk further, at the foot of Mount Misen, Daisho-in Temple is the island's great Buddhist temple: halls stacked up the hillside, hundreds of small statues, spinning sutra wheels on the stair rails, and gates open 8:00–17:00. It is the quietest serious sight on the island and the best place to be at four o'clock when the shrine crowds thicken.

The wild deer are everywhere between the pier and the shrine. They are used to people and will eat a map out of your hand; feeding them is discouraged, and on the streets you keep bags closed. In spring the cherry blossoms along the approach and around the pagoda hill make early April a second peak after autumn.

Staying overnight on Miyajima

The island has ryokan and small inns, most with Japanese-style rooms and dinner, and staying overnight has one great advantage: after the last ferries the day visitors are gone and the shrine approach is lit and empty. Our routes do not sleep on the island — they stay two nights in Hiroshima and give Miyajima a full day, which for most travellers is the better trade: the city's evening, the Peace Park after dark, and a station hotel for the next morning's Shinkansen. If a night on the island is the thing you want, tell us and we will price it as a change to any route below.

The Rest of Hiroshima

Hiroshima is a big, comfortable city that runs on streetcars — the Hiroden tram network is one of the largest in Japan, and it is how you will move between the station, the Peace Park and the entertainment district. For first-time visitors it is also the easiest large Japanese city to read: flat, gridded, built around its rivers. Beyond the park, the rebuilt Hiroshima Castle — the 1958 reconstruction of the 1590s keep, with a museum inside and the moat and grounds free to walk — and the Shukkeien landscape garden of 1620 are the two classic sights, both an easy walk from the park's north end; the covered Hondori arcade and the lanes around Nagarekawa are the evening. The city's dish is its own version of okonomiyaki — layered rather than mixed, with noodles — and the multi-storey buildings of okonomiyaki counters are an experience in themselves.

Getting to Hiroshima

Hiroshima is on the Sanyo Shinkansen: about 80 minutes from Shin-Osaka and about 100 from Kyoto on a Nozomi, and roughly four hours from Tokyo. It is the westernmost point of the classic first-trip route, which is why it appears on so many of our itineraries as the leg after Kyoto or, going the other way, the stop before Himeji and Osaka. Our West Japan routes come at it from Okayama and the Setouchi islands; our Tokyo–Fukuoka route continues on to Kyushu.

For independent travellers, Hiroshima is also where the Japan Rail Pass arithmetic changes: the pass rarely pays on Tokyo–Kyoto–Osaka alone, but add the return to Hiroshima and it can. Our guide to whether the JR Pass is worth it works through exactly this case, and the two-week Japan itinerary shows where the two Hiroshima nights sit in a longer trip.

Where Our Routes Stay in Hiroshima

Every route below spends two nights here, and the catalogue names the hotel. The Granvia and Sheraton are at Hiroshima Station, which suits the ferry day (the Sanyo Line leaves from under your room); the RIHGA Royal is in the centre beside the castle and a short walk from the Peace Park. Where the catalogue says "or similar", an equivalent property may be substituted for your dates.

Self-Guided Routes With Hiroshima Nights

Twenty-eight of our routes stop in Hiroshima. These seven cover the range — a week on a budget, the theme-park version, the West Japan and Setouchi routes, a family version, the Koyasan pilgrimage and the luxury private-guide trip. Prices are per person from the current price list and move with the departure date; every one includes the hotels, the Shinkansen legs, luggage forwarding between cities, a transport IC card, travel insurance and 24/7 support while you are in Japan.

Admission to the museum, the shrine and the ropeway is paid on the spot and is not included on any route — for the two days it comes to a little over ¥2,500 per adult with the ropeway, or about ¥600 without it. First trip and not sure whether Hiroshima fits? Our routes for first-time visitors explain when the western leg is worth the extra days.

FAQ: Hiroshima and Miyajima