For the next part of our trip with my sister and brother-in-law, we took a local train to Yamaguchi prefecture from Hiroshima. In this new prefecture we visited Iwakuni, a place surrounded by mountains, with a castle and an amazing, famous wooden Kintaikyo bridge. We intended to get the ropeway up to the castle, but the wind was so strong when we arrived they stopped it running. In fact, we went to a shrine before going to the bridge and castle area, and the wind was so strong the flagpoles nearly came loose on the steps. It was kind of terrifying at the time, but now (because, luckily, none of us got hurt) it’s quite a funny memory. After the shrine, we went to a lovely coffee shop to get a warm drink to keep us toasty and happy. Despite the wind, the sky was blue and the views were beautiful. We couldn’t ask for much more.
The shrine with the dangerous flagpoles was the first of many we went to during our time in Iwakuni and, although we didn’t get to go on the ropeway, the view we had of the castle from a distance was lovely. The bridge was the ultimate highlight of the day, along with the local snacks and souvenirs because they were top notch. We especially enjoyed Uiro (like mochi but a different texture, it’s a steamed sweet that’s quite hard to explain but they were delicious and we got sakura ones to suit the season) and the lotus root crisps (our favourite was certainly the lemon flavoured ones and we are very sad we didn’t get more on the day and will for sure get piles of them next time we’re in Yamaguchi). Honestly, I’ll be dreaming of these snacks for months to come, I’m sure.
Iwakuni was my favourite part of the trip we had with Ellen and Michael, closely followed by Toyama because it was so beautiful and peaceful, (if you haven’t seen my previous 7 blogs, you can use the back arrows to see the other parts of this trip we took to see how great Iwakuni must have been in comparison to all those other gorgeous places).
When I originally wrote this blog, I talked about the plan we had to do a road trip around Tottori and Shimane and how we could hopefully go to Yamaguchi again while we’re in Western Japan (to see more of the sights and enjoy more delicious treats). However, we have since done that road trip and there was so much to see in Tottori and Shimane, we didn’t make it down to Yamaguchi after all. Hopefully, some day we will return, sooner rather than later, but there’s just so many places in Japan that we love I can’t see exactly when our “Yamaguchi Part II” adventure will be!
(SIDENOTE: we were fortunate to see the twilight express up close at this point in the trip, as it stopped at our station at the exact time we were passing through, for that day only. Genuinely, couldn’t have gone better even if I’d planned it. For anyone interested in trains I’ll drop a picture of it below!)
