Travel Tips

This will be a section on places I have visited that I like. Some of the names of sights may not be listed due to lack of knowledge or Japanese language ability. This is kind of for my own records but if you are interested in visiting Japan, enjoy!

1. Hagi- Hagi city has many places to do your daily shopping. The city is known for its fine pottery. There is an area of town that I believe contains old samurai residences. At the end of this area there is a nice shrine. My favorite area is the Hagi Castle Town. Again, many famous residences and the next block over contains galleries of artists that have created the Hagi pottery. I enjoyed this area most and I found a fabulous gallery with a restaurant attached (definately off the beaten path).

2. Tsuwano (Shimane-ken)- Tsuwano is a town set deep in a valley in Shimane-ken. You drive down a winding route 9 until you see a large Torii at the side of the road. You drive through this Torii and it is a gateway to the town. You can see on the other side of the valley a large Shinto shrine built in the mountain side. You can climb up to this by stairs covered with 1100 torii. When you reach the top there is a little village of red, white , and green Shinto shrines. This is called Taikodani-Inari-jinja. From there you can take a rickedy chair lift to the summit of the mountain and walk to the castle ruins (unfortunately I missed out on the ruins because I couldn't read Japanese and didn't realize they were over there! Down in the town there are many tourist shops that are quite nice. Along the main road there is a canal that holds over 60000 coi or carp. There is also a catholic church in the town that has tatami mats rather than pews.

3. Yanai- The main purpose if this little weekend trip was to visit my JET friends on the south coast of Yamaguchi. Yanai is your average city, comparable to suburbs of Columbus or Cleveland. Tons of shopping, but nothing too outrageous or out of the ordinary, places to eat and drink but nothing too fancy. It would be a nice place to live and my friends Katherine (Manchester) and Lauren (York,UK) are lucky enough to live there. In the surrounding towns I have a few friends Ellen (Melbourne, Aus) and Kirk (Oakland, CA) that were able to hang out as well. In the evening we went to a neighboring town called Kuga that has a wonderful little tourist trap. It is called Sanzoku Toride (or Bandit Fortress) it looks kind of like a pagoda set in the mountains. I don't think it has any historical value. This venue is full of restaurants serving fabulous food, the most popular dishes being yakitori (grilled chicken on a stick) and onigiri (rice wrapped in nori-seaweed with little treats shoved in the middle). There are also little tourist shops to buy Japanese crap (for lack of a better word). After that we went to a quaint little bar called "Gotcha" which is owned by an English guy and then off to karaoke. Excellent hyaku-en shop (dollar store) there!