# What’s the story behind Miyajima and the spatula?
You’ll notice that there are many spatulas sold on Omotesando street and the world’s largest spatula is displayed in the middle of this shopping street! It is 7.7-meters tall, 2.7-meters wide, and weighs 2.5 tons! In Japan, we use the spatula to scoop rice. The common rice scooping spatula, called shamoji in Japanese, is about 21 cm.
In fact, Miyajima is the birthplace of shamoji. Around 1800, a monk anmed Seishin from Shinsen-ji Temple saw the goddess Benzaiten (who is worshipped at Miyajima’s main shrine) in a dream. The creation of shamoji is said to be the shape of Benzaiten’s biwa (a mandoline-like instrument). Seishin taught people on the island how to make spatulas out of sacred wood. Today, it is also said that eating rice scooped with the shamoji made of sacred wood from Miyajima brings you fortune. The large spatula on the shopping street was made in 1983 as a symbol of it’s birthplace.
# Create your own “shamoji postcard” in Miyajima!
You can actually make your own postcard out of a spatula at a workshop at Miyajima Hatsukaichi Taiken Kankou.
You stamp your favorite scenery from 4 available options on the spatula. You can draw anything you’d like on it, but remember that you can also use 5 other available stamps that will create one picture, if you stamp them in the correct order. It is so much fun to see what you get after stamping all 5 stamps!
You can mail the spatula to someone special from from Miyajima post office. Because the spatula represents good fortune, it’s good to send it to someone you care about as a small surprise. You can also choose to bring it home with you.
Map
589−2, Miyajima-Kitanocho-hama, Htsukaichi city, Hiroshima Pref.
