Kintai Bridge (錦帯橋) and Iwakuni Castle (岩国城)

Like all tourist attractions in the Hiroshima area, by now, I have been to almost all tourist attractions at least 2 times. Therefore this post is a combination of two separate visits during 2011, one on March 5, 2011 for a paid travel survey and one on Nov. 28, 2011 as part of a school trip with my laboratory classmates.

The pictures with the blue sky are from March 2011 and the pictures with the grey sky are from November 2011.

I had actually been to Iwakuni three times now. The first time was in May of 2010 for the American military base's open house.

The main attraction of Iwakuni is the Kintai Bridge (錦帯橋) and is know as one of "Japan's famous three bridges" (日本三名橋). The other bridges being Megane Bridge (眼鏡橋) in Nagasaki and Nihonbashi (日本橋) in Tokyo.





This is the location of Iwakuni. It is approximately 30 minutes from Hiroshima by train and more than 1 hour from the Hiroshima University campus in Higashi-Hiroshima.


View Iwakuni, Japan in a larger map

The first time I went here (March 5, 2011), I was doing a travel survey by myself so I had to take public transportation. This is the bus stop at the Iwakuni railway station. Like all towns in Japan that surround an American military base, I thought it was quite run down.



Looks like nothing has changed since the 80s?



Arrival at the site where the bridge is located. On March 2011, I arrived here at 4 pm or 5 pm on a weekday which explains the lack of people.





There is actually a castle, Iwakuni Castle, on top of the mountain as labeled in the photo. In March 2011, I arrived too late to take the cable car up to the mountain so I had a second chance to go to the castle when I came back in November 2011.



Also, crossing the bridge isn't free. You had to pay an admission fee of a certain amount that I don't remember now. (1000 yen?)



Some more pictures of the bridge.















From the bridge.



The cherry blossoms were about the bloom.



On the other side of the bridge, there were some temples and preserved traditional houses. More typical Japanese touristy things.



A view of the bridge from the opposite side.



Coming back to Iwakuni on a grey and cloudy weekend day in November 2011. Some pictures were taken with an iPhone 4S camera, and some were taken with my standard Canon PowerShot S80. Can you tell the difference?



The looking down from the bridge, you can see the water current. For some reason, this reminded me about the water effects in computer graphics!







This time, I got the chance to go up to the castle. It is actually quite small.







And here is the view from the castle.









Coming back down, as in other tourist attractions in Japan, there are always shops selling soft ice cream. This shop claims to be "Japan's No. 1 in having 100 different kinds of soft ice cream".





To end the trip, as with *any* organized group travel in Japan, the obligatory group photo.