Out with the boats before dawn, then a shrine reached from the water

The oyster rafts you see from the Miyajima ferry are not scenery. They are farms, worked before most visitors are awake, and this is one of the few ways to be on them.

The family has been in oysters here since the Edo period. You go out while it is still dark, watch the ropes come up, and then the boat carries on to Itsukushima Shrine — approached from the sea, which is how it was meant to be approached, and how almost nobody arrives today.

It runs in the cold months. That is worth knowing, because winter is when the rest of Japan is booked solid and Hiroshima is not.

One thing worth understanding before you book: the second half of this — the shrine approached from the water — needs water. On a big low tide the flats in front of the Great Torii are dry, which is a spectacle of its own but not one a boat can reach. The operator works around the day's tide so that you do not have to. If you want to see what the water is doing on your dates before you commit, our sister site tracks the Miyajima tide day by day.