Japan’s quiet coastal gem where you can escape the tourist crowds. Photo / Getty Images
“They don’t suffer from over-tourism here,” said my guide Mayuko, as we strolled through Takehara’s quiet Townscape Conservation Area. It’s a tongue-in-cheek comment, said with a smile, but there was a hint of melancholy in her words too.
It was a sunny Saturday lunchtime, yet wandering through this warren of handsome Edo period (1600 to 1868) streets, it might just as easily be a Monday morning, with just a handful of enamoured tourists around. Takehara’s traditional wooden houses with lattice-work facades and clay-fired roof tiles are set in a puffy canvas of bamboo forest (Takehara literally translates to “bamboo field” in Japanese), and behind the ornate noren curtains are a host of artisan craft shops, rustic sake breweries and charming cafes. For a crowd-averse introvert like me, it was a joy. But why weren’t there more people?
Takehara is sometimes referred to as “Little Kyoto” and it feels like Japan distilled – a therapeutic oasis of sublime scenery, delicate food and impeccable manners – but just on the outer fringes of the country’s “Golden Route” tourist path. But for those who do venture beyond Osaka, south into Honshu island’s Setouchi region, it’s a tranquil treat.
Takehara faces the Seto Inland Sea, a balmy Mediterranean-like expanse studded with over 3000 dense cedar forest islands that resemble floating broccoli florets. The dreamy two-carriage coastal train I had taken from Mihara to Takehara the previous day trundled by lonely palms and gently breaking waves, while the late-afternoon sun blanketed those lumpy islands with a soft golden hue. But this is also a working coastline, with the imposing J-Power power station and Kure’s hulking shipyards sitting (slightly awkwardly) alongside an otherwise pristine scene, far from Japan’s busy cities.
Leaving Takehara, I boarded the quirky weekend-only EtSETOra train; a neo-retro sightseeing train that follows the meandering coastal line, eventually turning inland to nearby Hiroshima. Inside, pistachio-green seats with shiny wooden armrests have been specially engineered to face the window, while discs of white cloud hang in the blue sky outside and passengers sip beers while watching the passing scenery. Branches grazed the windows as we passed by thickets of bamboo, high cedar mountains and neatly organised oyster farms. But, despite the beauty and intrigue, I was the only Westerner aboard.
Approaching the towering red and white cranes of Kure’s shipyard, Mayuko told me it was here that the battleship Yamato was built in 1940 – the lead ship of the Japanese Imperial Navy and the world’s largest battleship when it was completed. It was sunk by a barrage of torpedoes and bombs from US Navy aircraft in April 1945 and, three months later, this train’s final destination succumbed to a far more devastating attack.
Despite its traumatic past, modern Hiroshima is an ambitious and energetic city. Arriving at night into the orderly chaos of its vast train station was a blast for the senses after Takehara’s serenity, and watching the long snouts of the shinkansen bullet trains glide almost celestially in and out of the long platforms felt like a fever dream.
I made a beeline for the city’s gregarious okonomiyaki restaurants. A layered pancake of shredded cabbage, tempura crisps, scallions, bean sprouts, pork, yakisoba noodles and fried eggs, the whole thing was whipped up for me on a hissing flat griddle in a matter of minutes. I’m hopelessly British when handling chopsticks, but my pathetic attempts to clasp and ingest the okonomiyaki plumbed new depths of tedium (made worse when travelling with watchful Japanese friends, too). My clumsy pincing worked eventually, however, and the noodles were a hearty delight.
But as delectable as this comfort food is, that’s not why people visit Hiroshima. Seeing the skeletal ruins of the A-Bomb Dome the following morning – the only surviving building from the attack on August 6, 1945 – was probably the most macabre experience I’ve had anywhere as a tourist. Yet encircled by a garden of green palms and white azalea, there’s a strange beauty to the scene, too. At one point, a gangly grey heron perched on a charred centre wall beneath the mangled copper dome, and it felt like nature quietly reclaiming man’s ultimate folly.
“In this area, the city was a sea of flames. So some 50 buildings withstood the bombing, but they were either demolished or renovated after the war. This is the only building that has been preserved,” said Mayuko. Being from the area, I have to ask if she had any family who were here then.
“My mother was living in Hiroshima, but she was evacuated to the countryside because of air raids before the bombing. My grandfather was in Taiwan at the time, as he was serving as a medical doctor for the Japanese soldiers, so he was okay.”
It’s a heavy subject and after a contemplative walk around the pleasant Peace Memorial Park, I followed the winding hem of Setouchi’s coastline down to the Simose Art Museum. Winner of the 2024 Prix Versailles by Unesco and dubbed the “world’s most beautiful museum”, its eight brightly coloured shipping containers arrayed in a quiet water basin form a maze of floating galleries, said to be inspired by the region’s long shipping history.
With ghostly cloud-crested mountains behind and the dark sea just beyond, they’re an extraordinary sight, and I was lucky enough to stay overnight at the museum’s equally striking on-site waterfront villas. In the distance, Hiroshima’s faint city lights flickered like flames around an altar.
Venturing deeper into Yamaguchi Prefecture in Honshu’s narrow western tip is like ticking off a greatest hits of Japan’s most spectacular yet least-known sights. On the way to Yamaguchi’s north coast, I made breezy stops at the arcing wooden Kintaikyo Bridge (originally built in 1673, but later rebuilt and restored) and the layered cypress-bark roofs of the five-storey Rurikoji Temple Pagoda. I got a brief glimpse of the Sea of Japan in historic Hagi, before finishing in the majestic hot spring town of Nagato Yumato. It was November, but the temperature in this far-flung corner of Honshu was still nudging 20 degrees in the daytime.
“Actually, 99% of our visitors are domestic, can you believe that?” said the perpetually smiling Otani-San, greeting me outside Onto Onsen, a sleek single-storey building that hides a bubbling alkaline hot spring discovered over 600 years ago. Given the stunning setting inside a rolling valley, pierced by the serpentine Otozure River and flanked by quaint shops, traditional restaurants and friendly ryokans, it was a curious statistic.
Later, amid rising steam and the pungent scent of sulphur in the onsen bath, I asked him about a sign at the entrance which announced that people with tattoos are generally welcome, a notable shift in policy on a taboo subject for Westerners with tattoos who visit Japan (like me). Here, tattoos have historically been linked to organised gangs, like the yakuza – and have represented the sort of rigid, traditional customs which have long given rural and small-town Japan a standoffish, inaccessible quality that’s kept tourists away.
All that, however, is clearly changing. Otani-san’s response was that “We need to be more welcoming” but, in fact, I couldn’t have been made to feel more welcome. Slowly, Japan is learning to let discerning, respectful tourists off the well-beaten path and into its overlooked heartlands – and it’s an invitation we should all accept.
James March was a guest of Setouchi DMO (setouchitourism.or.jp). Nippon Airways flies from London Heathrow to Hiroshima (via Tokyo) from £1132 return (ana.co.jp). The Shinkansen from Tokyo to Hiroshima takes around four hours. The Simose Art Villa has rooms from £622 per night (artsimose.jp); Hoshino Resorts KAI Nagato has rooms from £101 per night (hoshinoresorts.com).
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