Miyajima, Japan – A Hike to Mount Misen

Overview ~ Mixed Bag ~ Walking vs. Hiking ~ Photos

   

Left: View from Mount Misen over Hiroshima Bay
Center: Approaching Misen Main Hall, under the peak
Right: Otorii - Shinto Shrine on Miyajima - flank of Mount Misen in background

We haven't done a lot of hiking on our trips to Japan. More accurately, we've didn't build our Japan trips around hiking. Walking, on the other hand, is a mainstay of our trips. We like to walk.

On our 2025 Japan trip, we managed to get in two short hikes in Kamakura. At the time, we wrote that we were calling them "hikes" because they required good shoes and the trails were at times steep and muddy. Hiking wasn't the reason we went to Kamakura. The hikes just worked their way into the trip between eating and visiting temples and shrines.

Something similar happened on Miyajima during our 2026 Japan trip.

Overview

Our original idea for Mount Misen was to take the Miyajima Ropeway up and then explore from there. When we got to the bottom station of the ropeway, the wait was 40 minutes. Standing around for 40 minutes didn't sound particularly appealing, so we started walking uphill instead. We ended up walking all the way up Mount Misen and then returning on a different route.

The basic numbers for our hike were:

• Length: 8.4 km
• Time: 2.5 hours
• Elevation gain: 512 m
• Date: October 22, 2026
• Up and down: on foot, using different routes. Up on the Momijidani Route. Down on the Daishoin Route.
• Ropeway: skipped because there was a 40-minute wait going up

A Mixed Bag

Mount Misen – and Miyajima more generally – was a mixed bag for us.

The scenery was beautiful. But Miyajima is also very popular, and there were lots of people down around the main sights. At the top of Mount Misen, we were again sharing the experience with many people, including those who had arrived using the ropeway. One person was trying to wow the crowds with his ability to scale the big, brown (oxidized), granite boulders (corestones) while another was shouting at him to not fall because it would be hard for an ambulance to arrive. All decidedly not so peaceful as we looked out over the Hiroshima Bay.

In contrast, the quietest and most enjoyable part was the space in between: walking up and walking back down. I guess the 40-minute ropeway line did us a favor. We hadn't necessarily planned on an 8.4-kilometer hike with 512 meters of elevation, but walking gave us the part of Miyajima we liked best.

We didn't check what the situation was for taking the ropeway back down. By that point, we simply chose another trail and walked back.

The trails themselves were another part of the mixed bag. Maybe our expectations come from the hiking we usually do, especially in Italy. Many of those trails follow old routes that existed long before hiking was a recreational activity. They moved people, animals, and goods between villages, farms, pastures, and mountain passes. As a result, they tend to follow the contours of the land. They traverse a slope, round a ridge, pass through a pasture or woods, and eventually reveal another view or destination. There is a sense that the trail has a reason for being where it is.

We didn't get that feeling on Mount Misen. Much of the route seemed designed simply to get you from the bottom to the top: up, up, up on an seemingly endless series of stairs through the forest. There were few views out and few moments when the landscape suddenly revealed itself. The forest was pleasant and peaceful, but the trail itself wasn't especially interesting. It felt less like traveling through a landscape and more like gaining elevation.

So, was Mount Misen worth it? Yes, but perhaps not for the reasons we expected. In our notes of that hike we wrote: "We didn't like Miyajima in general but at least we got a hike."

That sounds harsher than saying Miyajima was a "mixed bag," but it also captures our reaction at the time. The island has beautiful scenery, but the number of visitors affected our experience. Ironically, one of Miyajima's biggest tourist attractions – the ropeway – pushed us toward the experience we preferred. Faced with a 40-minute queue, we walked.

Even our short hike in Kamakura in 2025 felt more like a route through a landscape, connecting temples, shrines, neighborhoods, and wooded hills. Mount Misen felt much more like a route to a destination for the perfect Instagram shot.

Walking Versus Hiking in Japan

Walking has been one of the constants of our Japan trips even though hiking hasn't.

This distinction might sound arbitrary, especially considering how much ground we cover on foot. But our Japan itineraries aren't organized around trailheads, mountains, and hiking objectives in the way some of our other trips have been. We walk through cities, temple grounds, gardens, neighborhoods, forests, and occasionally onto something that indisputably becomes a hiking trail.

Kamakura in 2025 was a good example. The Daibutsu hike connected the Great Buddha area with Kita-Kamakura through wooded hills. In our notes, we called it a "walk-hike."

In the Kamakura post, we described how the sharp, forested hills that don't necessarily look very green from above become "a lush and vibrant landscape once you are inside of it." There was something similar going on at Mount Misen: getting away from the heavily visited attractions and actually entering the landscape changed the experience.

Photos

 

   

Views from Mount Misen over Hiroshima Bay

   

Views of trail going up and coming down from Moutn Misen.

  

Left: Gizo statues near Mount Misen Main Hall.

Center: Ornamental gate on the path back to town.

Right: View of Daishoin Buddhist temple.

  
Left: Sign showing how to get to the start of the ropeway.

Center: Brochure showing different routes to Mount Misen.

Right: Our tracks for the Mount Misen hike.