Hagi+Tsuwano

After departing the beautiful island of Miyajima we headed to the north coast of Western Honshu, to the seaside town of Hagi.
Hagi is a well known pottery producer and also paid an important part in the restoration of the Emperor to power (Meiji restoration) in 1867. There are many old samurai residences still intact and the Horiuchi area which retains its original samurai days layout of houses, and gardens containing many orange trees (natsu mikan) bordered by distinctive plaster walls.The oranges were grown to support the samurai in the days after the restoration when the samurai were no longer required, and are still popular in the area. Unfortunately when we visited it was wet and windy hence the lack of pictures, but we did get to the nice beach for the kids to play on first, we had invested in a fantastic Japanese style hotel which provided us with a huge suite of rooms (unbelievable for japanese standards), so we could dry out in comfort - great shoe drying service !
After Hagi we headed inland to the very pretty and traditional town of Tsuwano. Again this had very traditional layout and is settled into a very picturesque valley along a river, the main streets have narrow streams running down alongside the buildings which were stocked with huge carp - these were available for emergency food supplies in case of bad crops etc. but now just a great attraction and also well fed (especially by our kids).
The town has many small Sake (japanese rice wine) breweries and you may sample the range of Sake they produce - I did my best to sample as many as possible, a hard job but a felt it my duty !
There is a great view to be had from one of the hillsides which has a Shinto shrine reached by a zig zag path covered with a thousand red Torii gates (Emi counted them and was upset to find that there were in fact only 976 !). The view from this shrine was lovely and afforded us a great view of the SL steam train that runs along the valley. The hotel was nice and did some fantastic seasonal food, there was a small foot spa next to the restaurant and in the evening a heron would come down and paddle in the hot water, a very serene japanese scene whilst eating great fish and drinking local Sake !

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