The Samurai Bridge

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Philosophy of Travel

Our two-night stay in Iwakuni illustrates two of Peggy’s Rules of Travel. I try to follow my Rules of Travel whenever possible. Sometimes logistics don’t permit me to, but I am usually reminded why the rules exist when I don’t follow them. The Rules:

Always stay in a place for AT LEAST two nights.

• A two-night stay gives you one full day in a place. You will    have time to discover more about the place than its famous bridge, or tree, or museum. You won’t feel so rushed and crazy.

Take a vacation from your vacation.

• Go to a quiet town like Iwakuni to slow down. Do some laundry. Sleep late. Seek beauty. Avoid crowds. Go for a walk. Or, put your feet up and relax.

Both of these Rules echo the concept of Slow Travel. I just put in a link if you want to read more about it. We don’t do Slow Travel per se, but we have adopted some of the same ideas.

Ryokan Breakfast

I never had fresh-made tofu before. It was very tasty.

Top row: Fruit, green vegetable, omelet 

Bottom row: mentaiko (pollock roe), grilled fish, our old friend whitebait in a new form

A Full Day 

So. 

Today is our full day in charming, semi-rural Iwakuni. Did we folllow our advice? Did we slow down? Sort of.

It turns out there is a lot more to do here than we expected. And it’s also a beautiful day.

I found a geocache near the bridge, and then we crossed Kintaikyo (the bridge) for the first time. It was fun to be out there with lots of other people who were enjoying the beauty (and perhaps the silliness) of walking across an old bridge with five arches.

This is the view from our room in the ryokan. No kidding. The window screen got in the way.

I have marked the location of our ryokan.

 

There were a few shops on the other side of Kintaikyo, and then a strip of park running between two streets for several blocks. At the far end were some former samurai homes open to the public, a couple of museums, a Shinto shrine, and some restaurants. 

Lord Yoshikawa Hiroie, 1561-1625
First lord of Iwakuni

We went into the Kashiwabara Art Museum. The museum contained a lot of samurai weaponry and related paraphernalia, collected by Mr. Kashiwabara, and later donated to the museum. The museum was later donated to the city by the Kashiwabara family. I really enjoyed the helmets and the body armor. We took a few photos before we saw the sign that indicated “No Photos.”

Obviously, there were lots of swords. But also helmets, armor, saddles, stirrups, standards, horse standards, quivers, drums, hats, robes, spears, bows, arrows, and “war fans.” Most of the items were about 400 years old.  

I was intrigued by the war fans. I had not heard of such a thing before. Japanese war fans could be used for signaling. Certain types were made to be used as weapons. You would recognize most of these war fans as fans.

The collection included a number of sword guards from the samurai era. Here are two of them.

Here are two photos of the bridge during the flood of 1950. The Japanese used to have a dating system based on the reign of a particular ruler, and I don’t know how to interpret the numbers on one of the photos, but Google Translate confirms that it was the 1950 typhoon.

There was a little shop nearby where we had lunch and a local beer from Arch Brewery in Iwakuni.

Katsu

After lunch we wandered around the shrine. It was quite low key, compared to most we have seen, but that’s okay.

Several of the lanterns had been filled with stones. We had not seen that before.

On the way back we passed the White Snake Museum. Ick. Not my thing. Apparently some monks found an albino snake and managed to breed a lot of white snakes, which were considered sacred. Now the sacred snakes are in a museum, and I hope they stay there. We also passed a rescue center for cormorants. We could see some of the cormorants in an outside cage. They made horrible sounds. 

Ryokan Dinner

Another fantastic dinner tonight. With a menu this time.

Honestly, I didn’t like all of it (and didn’t even want to taste that turban shell thing), but I was thrilled to be able to try all of these beautiful and very authentic foods.

Today’s fabric is Samurai Shogun Tan from PacificGirls on Etsy.