Western Honshu

Like disparate siblings born of a set of common genes, the two coasts of Western Honshu have distinctly different personalities. Taken together, however, they embody the ancient and modern—those two seemingly bipolar time frames that exist in a more profound juxtaposition in Japan than perhaps in any other other country in the world. While the southern coast, or San-yo, has basically gone along with Japan's full-steam-ahead efforts to set the pace for the entire modern world, the San-in coast, on the north side of the rugged Chugoku San-chi or Central Mountains, has been largely left off the "Things to Exploit" list, thanks to its remoteness. Adding to the intrigue, touches of convenient modernity have made inroads in the fairly large and pleasantly humming San-in city of Matsue, yet you'll still encounter deep pockets of dramatic Old World charm along the largely developed San-yo.

Neither coast is short of history, religious significance, beauty, or culinary delights. Hiroshima survived one of history's most terrible events to become a disarmingly forward-looking city. Hagi is a scenic bayside town that for 500 years has been the center of Hagi-yakii ceramics, a light-colored and smooth-textured earthenware glazed with mysteriously translucent and crackled milky colors. Matsue attracted and enchanted the famous Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn, who did much in the 1890s to open Western eyes to the exotic realm he found in Japan—a realm that, foreign and inscrutable as it was, accepted him as well.

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