Takehara and Kure
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April 5, 2014 - Takehara and Kure
When I choose to visit Onomichi, I wanted to visit also the nearby Takehara city after watching the anime Tamayura, which take place mainly in the old district of this city.
Also know as the Small Kyoto in Aki, Takehara has a lot to offer to the visitor, and is an ideal day trip from Onomichi. By train, you need to transfer to the Kure line at Mihara, the whole trip take 51 minutes.
On the train, most tourists were going to Okunojima to see rabbits, Takehara was free of foreign tourist.
As soon I existed the Takehara station, I started to see Tamayura related items everywhere. Even the information office has a big placard on the faade with the four girls of the anime.
After getting a map of the old district in the office, I walked a bit to go there. The first place I visited was the Choseiji temple.
As the weather was bad overcast, I wanted to see all the temples first, and then visit the different shops and museums.
A lot are packed in the old district, which is made of Honmachi Dori and some side streets.
The most famous temple of Takehara, and taking an important place in Tamayura anime is Saiho-ji temple, with its famous Fumeikaku plateform.
The latest biggest temple here is Shoren-ji.
The old district has also several interesting shops, and some old houses to visit, two being samurai residence.
I first went to Kasai Residence, an old house in front of Honmachi Dori. It expose some old craft, and also many items about the Tamayura anime.
I also visited the Matsusaka Residence, which is quite big. It has some "modern" items from the beginning Meiji era, an a small garden.
As Takehara is the city of the bamboo, you can see bamboo everywhere, and even a miniature Tokyo Skytree in bamboo.
The restaurant choice is a bit limited in the old district, but the Horikawa restaurant is highly recommended. It is in the same house than its anime counterpart (Hoboro), and also has okomiyaki as its main dish.
I didn't see everything in the old district, and also none of the Takehara museum, but as it started to rain a bit, I preferred to go in some interior places.
Therefore, I took the train to Kure city, a 65 min trip (the return to Onomichi was way to long). Kure is a good day trip from Hiroshima, and I planned to see more exterior place in Mihara, but the weather decided otherwise.
While going back to Takehara station, I saw a nice Momoneko statue, the strange cat of the anime. The city use at maximum the attraction of the anime to promote itself.
Kure is an old naval city, with still many military activities. It was were the biggest battleship Yamato was made.
Near the JR station (and with practically a continuous roof, which was important with the heavy rain), I found the
JMSDF Kure Museum and the Yamato Museum.
The JMSDF Kure Museum is free, and have the big Akishio attack submarine in front. The museum explains very well the JMSDF task, with many English text. The submarine can be visited, but as the place is very limited, you can not see a lot of it. Still, it was a very interesting place, a lot more than what I thought it will be.
Across the street, the Yamato Museum is more above history. Kure naval history is well explained, and also the construction of the Yamato battleship.
Of course, the central piece is the Yamato model, at 1/10 scale, which is very huge.
But the museum has also other historic items, like a Zero fighter.
The modern and future part of the museum was more limited, but several activities would be great for children. But the wave making machine even interested me.
Takehara and Kure are both very interesting destination, with a very different type of focus. Both can be visited as fay trip from Onomichi, but to avoid a long return, Kure should be better coupled with Hiroshima
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List of Posts:
2014/04/18 - Azaleas and peonies in Tokyo 2014/04/15 - Haradani-en, Nishijin Textile Center and Fushimi Inari Taisha 2014/04/05 - Takehara and Kure |
