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"Photo Tours"
Kumamoto
Nagasaki

Related Sites
Kumamoto City
Nagasaki Tour

Kumamoto

The first city I will consider is Kumamoto . There are two main things to see here, Kumamoto Castle ( picture) and Suizenji Park ( picture). As with most castles in Japan, Kumamoto's is a concrete reconstruction of the original but is nevertheless worth seeing. The castle walls (which are original) were said to be so steep that not even a mouse could get up to the castle. Likewise you will find the entranceways to be very easily defendable and the castle is arrayed in a variety of anti-intruder measures. I enjoyed this castle greatly and think that anyone interested in seeing the castle technology of the past will find this interesting. The area around the castle also contains a large number of museums dealing with Kumamoto's and Japan's past. The second site, Suizenji Park is much smaller than I expected. The garden is essentially centered on a pond, with a series of hills representing the mountains of Japan on the far side (Mount Fuji is easy to spot), two temples on the left, a tea house on the entranceway side, and a bunch of souvenir stands on the right. Despite the small size I found the garden to be quite beautiful. The most convenient point of access to Kumamoto is the Bus Terminal, which is adjacent to the castle. If you come by train then you can take the trolley cars system to the castle or garden.

Nagasaki

For those that would find the history of the interaction between Japan and the west interesting I would recommend Nagasaki, but those who don't want to see such things should probably go elsewhere. Although it is not well known among westerners, this city grew in importance as the only port in Japan that was allowed to trade with the west. As a point of contact with the west it was also the point from which Christianity began to spread around Japan, and as a result there has traditionally been a large Christian community in the Nagasaki area. This status brought great hardship on the people when the government decided to ban Christianity and subsequently executed or imprisoned large numbers of Nagasaki Christians, the most famous event of which was the crucifiction of 26 prominent Christians. As a result of the ban on Christianity the government decided to expel the Catholic Portuguese who traded in Nagasaki at the time and instead replaced them with Protestant Dutch who were thought less likely to try and spread their religion. Eventually Japan opened up to the outside world about 100 years ago but maintained its status as a major shipping center, ultimately leading to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

Moving on from the topic of Nagasaki's history is the issue of what to see there. At first glance it looks as if there is not much to see, it appears to be just another boring Japanese industrial city. However, with a good walking guide book you will find that there are many interesting things to see. Sites that I would recommend include the museum behind the wall dedicated to the 26 Saints of Nagasaki (as mentioned earlier), which includes information about the history of Christianity in the Nagasaki area. The Buddist statues that the "hidden Christians" used to represent Mary when Christianity was banned were interesting. There are also a variety of Chinese temples (many imported from China) which the Chinese residents of Nagasaki built hundreds of years ago. The houses of prominent westerners who lived in Nagasaki are kept on the Dutch Slopes / Glover Garden area, as well as the house of the German Siebold which is located elsewhere. Although not much of the original site is left to see you should also go to see Dejima, the site of the former Dutch trading post in Nagasaki. Chinatown is much spoken about, but is actually rather small and overtouristy so I don't think it's worth seeing. Last but definitely not least, go to the Peace Park , Hypocenter Park and the Urakami Cathedral , once the largest church in the Orient but destroyed by the atomic bomb which exploded only 500 meters away (it's now rebuilt).

If you can find a good guide book it would definitely enhance the value of these sites because most of them are not in and of themselves impressive, it is the history behind them which is so interesting. Some friends of mine who went there without guide books found it to be a very boring and featureless city, so a guide is very important. If you can read Japanese then I would recommend "Aruku-chizu" which also includes a good walking tour of these sites.

If you want to see pictures and more detailed descriptions of any of these places in Nagasaki then I suggest you visit the Virtual Tour of Nagasaki, which is also the site which the highlighted words in my description of Nagasaki are linked to.

Related Sites
Iwakuni Tourism
Hiroshima Info
Hattoji Villa

Iwakuni

Moving East across Japan to Honshu (the main island) we come to Iwakuni . This is famed for its 5 arched bridge (the "Kintaikyo Bridge") ( picture), which I highly recommend. Unfortunately that is about all that is worth seeing in my opinion. There is a park beyond the bridge with a samurai house and such, but the house is rather boring looking and you can find samurai items all over Japan. Likewise the castle on the top of the hill is not all that remarkable as far as castles go in Japan (I'd recommend Kumamoto's or Himeji's castle).

Hiroshima

Of the two atomic bomb targets Hiroshima is most certainly the more famous among westerners. However I find this unfortunate as I found the city rather dull but liked Nagasaki. The view of the famed floating Torii (temple gate) on Miyajima Island is nice but I didn't find it at all worth its reputation as one of the three most scenic spots in Japan. Other then Miyajima all there to see is Hiroshima's Peace Park. The park and museum will not disappoint you, but unfortunately that's about all that sets the city apart from any other modern city in Japan. You can find some other ideas of what to see in Hiroshima from

Hattoji

Next is Hattoji in Okayama prefecture. This was a very interesting town to stay and relax in. It's preserved as it was long ago, so the houses all have the traditional foot thick thatched roofs and I also saw a group of people planting rice by hand as it was traditionally done. If you look around you can find a potter living close to the village and he sells things he's made in the traditional Bizen-yaki style of the region (this is a burnt looking glaze that I think is rather nice). With a bit of hiking you can reach the top of the hill behind the town and there is a very nice view of the mountains. Alas, if you're looking for a place with lots of sites then this is not the place to go. Basically you should go here to get away from people, relax, and see a few interesting things in the process. The only place I know of to stay here is the "International Villa" and considering as I saw no other tourists there this is possibly the only place you can stay.

"Photo Tours"
Kagawa Prefecture
Kochi Prefecture

Related Pages
About Cape Ashizuri

Seto Ohashi Bridge

Going south from here you can cross the Seto Ohashi Bridge linking Honshu (the main island in Japan) with Shikoku (the fourth largest island in Japan). It's quite a long bridge (actually a series of many bridges jumping across small islands in Japan's Inland Sea) and has the status of the longest bridge carrying both cars and trains (there are two levels) or something like that (Japanese love to talk about "*** is the longest / widest / biggest etc. in the world"). Near the terminus in Shikoku you can visit Takamatu or Kotohira.

Takamatsu

In Takamatsu you should first go to the tourist information booth outside the main train station. They have an excellent English language brochure describing all the main sites in detail and can give you maps, etc. The Ritsurin Park is considered to be among the best gardens in Japan and although I didn't visit it the pictures make it look very beatiful. If you go to Yashima you can see two interesting things. First, at the base of the hill is "Shikoku Village". You can find a variety of things from around Shikoku included a re-creation of the vine bridges that were once used in a few places (you can go across, but the clearly visible steel cables kind of ruin the feeling of doing something adventurous). There's a variety of traditional Japanese buildings including a kabuki stage and a place they used to make soy sauce. The most interesting things to me were the houses of the lighthouse keepers. These were built by westerners for the Japanese in the late 19th century so the outsides and insides are western in style. It must have been quite an experience for a lighthouse keeper to move from the traditional Japanese lifestyle to these western lighthouses! Alas, all the information I saw was in Japanese only so this sites may not have as much meaning to you if you can't read Japanese. Moving on, you can take the tram up Yashima hill. The view of the Inland Sea is spectacular, especially around Sunset. If you have a car you can also drive to the top.

Kotohira

About a one hour train ride from Takamatsu is Kotohira, or the Kompira Shrine. Although this is a shrine for the safety of sailors it is on top of a mountain. I guess it makes sense as this way the hill it's on can be seen from the sea. You can walk the ~500 step climb to the main shrine where most people stop or you can walk all the way up to the inner shrine (picture), a total of about 1,300 steps from the base of the hill. The view of the valley from the main shrine is magnificent and the hills scattered here and there around the valley have an interesting pattern and shape to them. The view from the inner shrine isn't too much of an improvement, but I figured that if I went all the way to Kotohira I might as well go all the way to the top. Other sites in Kotohira are the oldest actively used Kabuki theatre in Japan, a bronze covered bridge, and a lighthouse (even though it's nowhere near the sea).

Oboke Gorge

South of Kotohira is the Oboke and Koboke area. This gorge is famous in Japan, but the concrete buildings hanging down from the cliffsides, as well as a road on one side and train line on the other kind of ruin the experience. You can take a boat on the river passing through the gorge or see fleeting glimpses from the train (there's a lot of tunnels so you can only see bits of it from the train). In the Iya Gorge , another gorge near this area you can go across a bridge made only of vines, they're replaced every three years and are quite big so there's not much to worry about. There are also replicas in a few places in Shikoku, for example the Shikoku Village in Tamatsu, but they all have steel cables reinforcing them. I didn't go see the Iya gorge one so I can't offer an opinion, but if you don't have a car it's very difficult to get to (there are buses but they are few and far between).

Cape Ashizuri

For more detailed information and directions to Ashizuri see an email about Ashizuri and Shimanto River that I sent someone who wanted to know how to get there and what to see.

Shimanto River

The Shimanto River is much vaunted as either the last stream in Japan (it's the last major river without a dam on it) or as the cleanest river in Japan. If you see it near Nakamura it doen't look like anything special, but if you go inland (by train or car) then the river valley is very beautiful (picture). In my case I stayed at a campground by a kayaking place (strangely enough called the Canoe House ( picture) and the next day they took us on an 8 km kayaking trip downriver which gives you a very good view (pictures of me after the kayaking <1>, <2>). The small whitewater areas were fun, although the one time I flipped the kayak wasn't such a fun experience (you are sealed in the kayak, so in order to get out you have to undo the seal and pull yourself out of the kayak, all while you are underwater, unable to breathe, and being swept along by the current). But there were plenty of instructors accompanying us, so they helped out those who got stuck underwater. As with many things in Japan, the instructions were only in Japanese, so this could cause a problem for some but it is a good experience if you're willing to give it a try. The campground at the Canoe House is also very cheap, only 300 yen if you have your own tent or 3300 yen if you rent a tent, so only 1650 yen per person if you split it two way. Even if you don't try kayaking, the train trip or drive are also very pretty and the one car train on a one track line was also kind of interesting.

For more detailed information and directions to the Shimanto River / Ashizuri area see an email about Ashizuri and Shimanto River that I sent someone who wanted to know how to get there and what to see.

"Photo Tours"
Himeji & Kobe
Osaka
Nara
Kyoto

Now back to Honshu and this time the Kansai area (Osaka and it's surroundings). The colloquial name for the area, Kinki, surprises plenty of foreigners (and Japanese when you explain the meaning of the word in English) but also explains the reason for the name of the popular Japanese music group "Kinki Kids".

Himeji

If you're coming on the train from the west then the first place to see is Himeji . Himeji Castle (picture) is a short walk from the central train station and is considered to be the best castle in Japan that is still the original structure, as opposed to the ferroconcrete reconstructions of castles that dot Japan (such as Osaka castle). The castle itself is made of wood and is rather magnificent if you like the Japanese style of castles, as I do.

Kobe

For a western tourist Kobe doesn't have much to offer, but it is a nice city and is probably most well known among foreigners for the Hanshin - Kobe earthquake in 1995 that killed over 5,000 people. If you live here you can live on a mountainside, in the normal city, or even on islands that are connected to the mass transit system, so people say it is an excellent place to live.

Osaka

Next is Osaka, Japan's second city (actually third in terms of population, but Yokohama is a suburb of Tokyo). Although I lived hear I'd say that there's not much for the tourist to see and you should probably move on to Kyoto or Nara. If you don't get a chance to see a castle somewhere else in Japan and you want to see one then you can go to Osaka Castle (picture), the view from the top isn't bad and in April the cherry blossoms are nice, but Himeji or Kumamoto are much better. If you come from the Kansai airport you could go see the Nintoku Burial Mound in Sakai City (Mozu station), south of Osaka. This is the largest burial mound in the world and is over a kilometer in circumference. However you can't cross the moat surrounding the mound so there's not much to see other than what looks like a forest on a hill in the center of a moat. One note of interest is the shape of the mound, it looks like a giant keyhole, but you don't really get that feeling from the ground because it takes so long to walk all the way around the mound. There's a museum in the park near the mound which details the history of Sakai and it's history as a major port, sword making, and later gun producing site in Japan but unfortunately it's all in Japanese. To see a bit of what modern Japanese life is like you could go to the underground shopping district by Osaka station, but be forewarned that you'll probably get lost and have a hard time finding your way out. You could also go to Namba and see the many Shoutengain (shopping arcades. basically long covered streets with stores lining the sides and stretching on for kilometers), the most famous of which is Shinsaibashi. At night this area is swarming with young people.

Kyoto and Nara

Kyoto and Nara are famous for their temples, mostly originating from the status of the two cities as former Japanese capitols. In ancient Japan the capital used to change every time a new emperor took the throne, but due to the cost of this it was decided to establish a permanent capital at Nara. About 70-80 years later the "permanent" capital was moved to Kyoto where it remained in some form for around 1000 years. By this I mean that the emperor lived in Kyoto for that long, but the administrative center of government was moved to Tokyo (then "Edo") long before that. Anyways, that is the reason for the large number of temples in this area.

Nara

First is Nara. If you want to see Japanese temples and actually feel like you're in Japan, not the middle of a city (such as Kyoto's temples) then Nara would be an excellent place to go. Nara's sites are mosly located in Nara Park, which is only a short distance from the Kintetsu Nara station (you can also get there easily from JR Nara station). These include the oldest wooden pagoda in Japan (in the world?), the largest bronze Buddha statue in the world, and several other temples which are reached through nice walks through forested areas of the park. And of course there are the deer (picture), Nara's symbol of sorts. These can be seen in a variety of places, when I went the largest group seemed to be clustered around the previously mentioned wooden pagoda. For 100 yen or so you can by crackers which you feed to the deer. But beware, these deer are used to receiving food from tourists, so the moment they realize you have something they will swarm around you and can be rather rude. A story I heard was that in ancient times if someone killed a deer in Nara then they had to commit seppuku (a painful form of suicide).

Kyoto

Kyoto is a city much written about. For a list of some of the internet resources on Kyoto, along with an interesting National Geographic article, see Yahoo! Travel's Kyoto Page . If you go to Kyoto you should see the Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji in Japanese) (picture), a famous temple covered in gold leaf and located in a beautiful scene next to a pond surrounded with bamboo and other trees. I would also recommend Kiyomizu Temple, a temple located in the hills surrounding Kyoto and which has a good view of the city.

Other than that there are several thousand temples and shrines (temple = Buddhist; shrine = Shinto, the traditional Japanese religion) throughout Kyoto and you should choose where to go depending on your interests. One popular location is Ryouanji-Temple which has a famous Zen rock garden, if you like that sort of thing. Look in any guidebook to Japan and they should have a large section on things to see in Kyoto.

Kiso River Valley

You can reach both cities by taking the train and then a bus. If you come by train and want to take your time then you can also stop in Agematsu and see an interesting rock formation along the river there. I believe there are buses from the train station, but I opted for a dull 30 minute walk through the town and along the road. If you come by car then you can drive to a parking lot on the hill behind the river. The rock formation is interesting, but you can do without going there.