It sucks to wake up to rain. Its supposed to clear up by the afternoon, but it makes everything more complicated.

Anyways, I have some pictures and stuff.


Here is my mom in front of the Miyajima Otorii at high tide. This is considered one of the three greatest views of Japan.



This is the castle at Iwakuni. There are a lot of reconstructed castles in Japan.
Getting to Iwakuni was a terrible suburban slog, but the historical park around the castle was lovely. There were three stray cats lying in the road when we arrived.

This is the famous Iwakuni bridge. Built in the feudal era after several previous bridges washed away, it was reconstructed in 2004 using traditional techniques.

Blogger keeps inserting pictures at the beginning of the post instead of at the cursor. Grr.

We didn't make it all the way to the next town, but camped in a small town on the way. I:d post a picture if i weren:t getting sick of this computer.

Next was Tsuwano 津和野,　which is famous for a heron festival, a street with carp swimming under it, Christian martyrs, and an Inari shrine with tunnels of hundreds of torii.
Next was Hagi. It's got castle ruins, but mom has all the good pictures.


After that was some lovely countryside and twisty forest roads to Akiyoshidai, a limestone plateau with that Karst (had to look it up too) and caves.
The sign says "Hell Plateau," I think because the Buddhist hell has lots of pointy rocks. I took a picture of the full sign to translate later.

Here's the entrance to the cave. Most of my pictures inside the cave are blurry, but highlights include Mt. Fuji and "1000 plates."

I already posted our best picture of Shimonoseki. I think I'll do our Kyushu adventures a little later.