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Chugoku

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Chūgoku (中国) is the westernmost part of the main Japanese island Honshu.

Prefectures

Cities

  • Hiroshima - site of the infamous nuclear bomb attack
  • Okayama - featuring one of Japan's Top 3 Parks and a brooding black castle
  • Onomichi - hillside town with pleasant paths connecting dozens of small temples
  • Shimonoseki - at the southwestern tip of Honshu, one of the famous cities, known for fugu (globefish/pufferfish/blowfish)
  • Hagi - one of the most beautiful castle towns in Japan, also the birthplace of many great statesmen who played important roles in Meiji Restoration

Other destinations

  • Bizen - home to Japan's oldest and most respected style of pottery
  • Miyajima - one of the most beautiful islands in all Japan

Culture and History

The name Chūgoku literally means "Middle Country", the sole surviving relic of a historical division of Japan into "Near Countries" (近国 Kingoku), "Middle Countries" and "Far Countries" (遠国 Ongoku), based on distance from the capital Kyoto. Strictly speaking, today's Chugoku covers only the Middle Countries along the San'indo and San'yodo roads, and hence Okayama is sometimes not considered a full part of Chugoku, as only three of its five component provinces (Mimasaka, Bizen and Bitchu) were Middle Countries.

In Japanese, the characters 中国 and the reading Chūgoku are also used to mean "China". (The same characters are used in Chinese, but pronounced Zhongguo.) However, as the Chugoku region is always referred to with the qualifier "-chihō" and the People's Republic of China and Republic of China can be referenced by their full names, there is usually little scope for confusion.

Talk

Travel to Chugoku & Visa Requirements

Flights and airtickets to Chugoku

Hiroshima has a fairly large airport, with domestic and some international connections.

By train

The San'yo Shinkansen line links Hiroshima, Okayama and other major towns to Kyushu in the southwest and Kansai (Osaka) to the east. The less populated northern Japan Sea coast is served by ordinary train services.

Tours & Getting around Chugoku

By train

The JR West San'yo Area Pass [1] allows essentially unlimited travel in Chugoku, Kansai and part of Kyushu, including the Shinkansen (even Nozomi). The 4-day/8-day pass is

Destinations in Chugoku:

Hiroshima (prefecture) / Okayama (prefecture) / Shimane / Tottori (prefecture) / Yamaguchi (prefecture) /

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This page was last edited at 19:12, on 9 July 2008 by Wikitravel user Episteme. Based on work by Ted O'Neill, Jani Patokallio, Ryan Holliday and Evan Prodromou, Wikitravel user(s) Suhobei and InterLangBot and Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel.

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