From Wikitravel

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

Contents 1 Prefectures 2 Cities 3 Other destinations 4 Understand 5 Talk 6 Get in 6.1 By plane 6.2 By train 7 Get around 8 See 9 Do 10 Eat 11 Drink 12 Get out

Prefectures

• Hiroshima
• Okayama
• Shimane
• Tottori
• Yamaguchi

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. It is known for fugu (globefish/pufferfish/blowfish)
• Hagi — One of the most beautiful castle towns in Japan. It is 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

Understand

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

Get in

By plane

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.

Get around

See

Do

Eat

Drink

Get out

• Shikoku — Japan's oft-ignored fourth island is easily accessed from the southern coast of Chugoku.

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