Pre-Typhoon Low-Tide View of the Itsukushima Shrine Gate at Sunset
desktop background image of the main gate of the Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社) at low tide, during sunset the day before a typhoon arrives -- Shrine Gate at Low Tide Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社) -- Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社) -- Miyajima, Hiroshima, Japan -- Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Friedl, https://regex.info/blog/ -- This photo is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (non-commercial use is freely allowed if proper attribution is given, including a link back to this page on http://regex.info/ when used online)
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 32mm — 1/125 sec, f/5, ISO 2500 — map & image datanearby photos
Shrine Gate at Low Tide
Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社)
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We popped down to Hiroshima this weekend, and spent the night in Miyajima, near the Itsukushima Shrine. A typhoon is coming, so last night's sunset was not too shabby.

厳島神社鳥居、昨日夕方。台風19号の影響奇麗夕焼けでした。今日、雨が始まる前に京都に戻りました。

The shrine is notable for being in a tidal plane with a huge difference between high and low tides (the difference yesterday morning was 3.41m — more than 11 feet), so the look and feel of the area changes dramatically throughout the day. It's prettier when the water is up, but it's more interesting when the tide is out because you can walk around out past the gate.

Posts from earlier years from the same area include one about low tide (twice), one about the area at dusk, the gate at night, among others.

On the way home this afternoon, the first drops of Typhoon #19 (Vongfong) started hitting as we pulled into Hiroshima Station to switch to a bullet train. The typhoon will hit there in earnest tomorrow, with it forecast to reach Kyoto by the evening.

It's the middle of a three-day weekend, so I thought travel would be relatively calm and uncrowded, but normal reserved seats on every bullet train for hours were sold out. The thought of having to stand for the two-hour trip to Kyoto was unappealing, so we opted for Green Car seats, where we could indeed get a reservation to Kyoto. Green Car seats are four to a row, instead of six, so it was nicer. It was also much more expensive, of course, but we were lucky to get them; by the time we got to Osaka, the entire train was sold out, and the moment we arrived in Kyoto, a conductor arrived to make sure our seats were empty, presumably for the few lucky folks with confirmed reservations from Kyoto.

Continued here...


All 2 comments so far, oldest first...

That looks to be a rather dramatic shot – the red sky, reflected on the pools of water, and mingling with the red/orange of the shrine. Nicely done, it must have been even more impressive in person!

— comment by David K. on October 12th, 2014 at 10:15pm JST (10 years, 2 months ago) comment permalink

This is fantastic!

— comment by Nils Ferry on October 12th, 2014 at 11:19pm JST (10 years, 2 months ago) comment permalink
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