CHŪGOKU TRIP | JAPAN.GG

The Atomic Bomb Dome was the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, designed by Czech architect Jan Letzel and completed in 1915. The bomb on 6 August 1945 detonated roughly 600 metres directly overhead — the near-vertical blast destroyed every horizontal surface while leaving the vertical walls standing. That structural coincidence is the only reason it looks the way it does. It became UNESCO World Heritage in 1996 over the expressed reservations of both the United States and China. The Peace Memorial Museum, redesigned most recently in 2019, frames the Dome through its central corridor before you enter the building — the arrangement is deliberate and it earns every word written about it. Give it three hours minimum and don't treat it as a box to tick. Miyajima is a 10-minute ferry from Miyajimaguchi — around 40 minutes total from central Hiroshima. The current torii, 16 metres tall and built from camphor wood, is the eighth iteration of a gate standing in some form since the 12th century; this one was raised in 1875. The island was historically so sacred that births and deaths were prohibited on its soil — the dying and pregnant were required to leave. The deer that roam freely today have no interest in any of this and will eat your map.

Korakuen's designation as one of Japan's three great gardens — alongside Kenroku-en in Kanazawa and Kairaku-en in Mito — is an Edo-period ranking that predates tourism by centuries, and it holds up. Construction started in 1687 under lord Ikeda Tsunamasa and took 14 years; the design has changed relatively little. The Crow Castle directly above it — named for its black-lacquered walls — had its original 1597 tower destroyed in a 1945 Allied bombing raid; the concrete reconstruction went up in 1966 and has a lift inside, which is either practical or a minor tragedy depending on your priorities. West by train, Kurashiki Bikan Quarter survived largely because the canal-side warehouses were converted into bank storage in the Meiji period, which made demolishing them commercially stupid. The Ohara Museum of Art, founded 1930 by cotton magnate Ohara Magosaburō, is the oldest Western art museum in Japan — it opened with a Monet purchased directly from the artist's dealer. Bizen is one of Japan's six ancient kilns (Rokkoyo), producing unglazed, ash-fired pottery in the same hillside kilns for over a thousand years; the surfaces come entirely from the wood ash and firing process, no glaze involved.

Tottori Sakyu runs 16 kilometres along the Japan Sea coast and up to 2.4 kilometres inland. The tallest ridge reaches 47 metres — modest by global standards and genuinely disorienting when you are standing in the middle of Japan. The dunes exist because the Sendai River deposits sand offshore that the seasonal prevailing winds push back inland; they are geologically active and measurably moving east. The Sand Museum, opened 2006 in a purpose-built hall beside the dunes, commissions an entirely new set of international sand sculptures each year — the technical level is consistently better than it has any right to be, and the exhibition changes completely every twelve months. Tottori is Japan's least-populous prefecture, and the dunes reflect it: on a weekday in spring, the main ridge is yours. A family-run camel operation has offered rides here since the 1960s, which is either charming or baffling and possibly both. Uradome Coast, 15 minutes east by bus, runs sea kayaking through sea caves and rock arches in water clear enough to track fish from the surface.