Road Trip to Yamaguchi Prefecture (山口県)

In the summer of 2012 on August 15, my friend from Jamaica and I were discussing about places to do a one day road trip since he had just acquired a car and Japanese driver's license. (I had a Japanese driver's license but no car)

Originally we wanted to drive across the Seto Ohashi Bridge (瀬戸大橋) from Okayama (岡山) to the island of Shikoku (四国) but we wanted to see the scenery of the Inland Sea from the bridge and since the weather was not cooperating with us on the day we wanted to go (it was cloudy), we choose to instead drive to neighbouring Yamaguchi Prefecture (山口県) from where we lived in Higashi-Hiroshima (東広島) in Hiroshima Prefecture (広島県).

It was hard to find tourist attractions worth visiting in Yamaguchi Prefecture, but after looking at some travel magazines at the local Tsutaya, a book and video rental store, we decided to visit Hagi city (萩) and then Yamaguchi city (山口市).

Yamaguchi city, the capital of Yamaguchi Prefecture, also known as "Kyoto of the West" in the tourism propaganda.

The Many Visits to Miyajima

Miyajima is famous for being one of Japan's three best views and is also the home of the iconic floating torii that is usually featured in the travel books and pamphlets on Japan.

I have now been to Miyajima too many times. Four times in fact, first in 2004 on my first visit to Japan, and then two times in 2010, one time for a school field trip and one time when I went with a visiting friend, and then one time in 2011 for a travel survey. That's quite a lot of times going to a place whose sole tourist attraction is basically the floating torii and shrine!

In this post, I will show pictures taken during my 2010 and 2011 visits.

The famous floating torii.

Kure (呉) - Imperial Japan's Naval Past

On February 19, 2011, I visited Kure, Japan (呉) as part of a travel survey I was paid to do by a consulting company. Because the local government wanted to increase the number of foreign tourists visiting the area, they hired a consulting company to look at and to asess the tourism facilities, mainly the transport facilities. As a result, the consulting company contacted our university and asked a couple of foreign students from a couple of different countries to take part in a survey of the transport facilities around Kure.

Basically I was paid to follow a set travel route and to take pictures and note down any difficulties in using the transport system to get to the tourist spots.

Kure is about 31 minutes by train southeast of Hiroshima and is famous for its naval past in Imperial Japan.

The Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force Kure Museum with the giant submarine in the entrance.

Bird's Eye Views from Tokyo-Hiroshima Flights

Due to 3 internships at 3 different times of the year and 1 field research in Tokyo, I have taken the flight from Tokyo Haneda to Hiroshima more times than any other route that I have previously flown. In total, I have this segment 8 times on both Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways including one time on one of the first Boeing 787s ever delivered.

There are various reasons why I choose to take the plane over taking the Shinkansen (high speed rail) and the main reason is cost. Shinkansen tickets are expensive (15,000 yen one way, $180~) and are never discounted while if you book airplane tickets more than 1 month in advance, the price can be as low as 11,000 yen, $133~.

The Shinkansen takes 4 hours from train station to train station and the flight takes 1.5 hours so if you add in access time, the time required is around the same.

The side benefit of taking the flight is that you get to see spectacular bird's eye views of Japan ^^

In this post, I complied the pictures I took from various flights that I had taken.

Kurashiki (倉敷), Takamatsu (高松) and Okayama (岡山)

The following pictures are from a day trip that a friend and I went on January 9, 2011 to Kurashiki (倉敷), Takamatsu (高松) and Okayama (岡山). The reason for this trip was because I had 2 times remaining on the 5 day non-consecutive local train pass (stops at every stop) called the Seishin 18 Kippu (青春18きっぷ) and I had to use it before the pass expired. Due to being located in such an isolated area such as Hiroshima, the closest interesting day trip via local train were to these 3 cities.

After around 2 hours on the train we arrived in Kurashiki where the main attraction is the preserved canal area that retains the atmosphere of "old Japan".

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.