Yamaguchi

Hagi was laid out under the Choshu domain and then, unusually, was not rebuilt over. The grid of the samurai quarter and the merchant streets survives closely enough that an Edo-period plan of the town remains a usable guide to walking it, and the earth walls, gateways and lanes are the originals rather than reconstructions of them.

The other half of the interest is what happened here afterwards. A disproportionate share of the men who brought down the shogunate came out of this small town, and several of the houses and the private school associated with them are open. It gives Hagi a double character that is rare: a place preserved because it stopped mattering economically, and simultaneously one of the places where the modern state was argued into existence. Walk it slowly and on foot; the distances are small and the interest is in the texture rather than in any single building.

Two days, and the prefecture is really a coastal loop around the western tip of Honshu. The three things worth building around are the vermilion torii tunnel at Motonosumi on the north coast, the wooden arched bridge at Iwakuni in the east, and the limestone plateau and cave at Akiyoshidai in the middle.

Distances are the problem: Iwakuni is close to Hiroshima and about two hours from Shimonoseki at the western tip. Motonosumi is on the north coast with almost no public transport to it. Akiyoshidai is inland and served by infrequent buses.

Two days with a car does the loop. Two days without one does Iwakuni and Shimonoseki and skips the rest. Given that Iwakuni is easier from Hiroshima, many visitors are better served treating Yamaguchi as an add-on to a Hiroshima trip than as a standalone destination.

A car, if you want the north coast or the plateau. This is the clearest case in western Honshu: the shinkansen runs along the southern side and the interesting things are on the northern one, and the connections between them are slow and rare. Motonosumi in particular has effectively no useful bus service.

Without a car you can still do Iwakuni's bridge, Shimonoseki's market and straits, and Hagi's samurai town on the north coast, which has a station. That is a reasonable two days. But the prefecture's best-known image — a hundred-odd small torii descending a headland to the sea — is a driving destination and there is no way around that.

Shimonoseki sits on the strait at the western tip of Honshu and handles most of the country's pufferfish trade, along with the licensing of the chefs permitted to prepare it. Everything eaten elsewhere in Japan has been shipped from here, which is the plain reason it is both less expensive and in better condition at the source.

It is a winter dish rather than a year-round one, and it is served several ways in the same meal — sliced thin enough to read through, simmered in a pot, and fried. Approach it as an occasion rather than as lunch: the restaurants that do it properly expect you to sit down for a couple of hours. If you are travelling outside the season, the same city gives you the strait itself, which is narrow enough to watch shipping queue through, and a market that is worth an early morning regardless of what is in it.

The Sanyo Shinkansen stops at Shin-Yamaguchi and Shin-Shimonoseki, putting the prefecture about four and a half hours from Tokyo and an hour from Hiroshima. Ube Airport serves the south coast. The catch is that almost nothing worth seeing is next to a shinkansen station: Hagi is over an hour by bus across the mountains from Shin-Yamaguchi, Akiyoshidai is a bus from either Shin-Yamaguchi or Mine, and Motonosumi Shrine on the northern coast has no practical public transport at all. Iwakuni and Shimonoseki are the exceptions, both reachable by local train. Plan on a rental car if the north coast is on your list.

Winter on the north coast is windy and grey and the roads along it are exposed, which matters because that is where the scenery is. The southern side is mild all year.

The other thing to time is the pufferfish season at Shimonoseki, roughly autumn through winter, which is the reason to eat there and is genuinely seasonal rather than a marketing line. Summer is hot and humid and the limestone plateau, which is unshaded grassland over a cave system, is hard going in it — though the cave itself stays at a constant cool temperature year-round, which makes it a good August destination.

The coast is mild and maritime — January highs near 10°C and snow rare at sea level, though the inland plateau is colder. Fugu season runs roughly October to March, which is when Shimonoseki is worth planning around. Summer is humid and hot in the low 30s°C. Akiyoshido cave holds a steady temperature around 17°C year-round, which makes it a useful August destination and a cold one in winter. The Kintaikyo is at its best with cherry blossom in early April or maple in mid-November. Motonosumi Shrine's cliff-top torii line is exposed and the sea there is roughest in winter.

Shimonoseki has handled fugu since the ban on eating it was lifted in the 1880s, and the licensed restaurants there serve it as paper-thin sashimi, in hotpot and as fried karaage — it is a winter dish and priced accordingly. Kawara soba is green tea noodles seared on a hot roof tile with beef and egg, a Shimonoseki-area invention. The Sea of Japan coast lands uni, and Hagi's summer sea urchin is the local extravagance. Natsumikan citrus was cultivated commercially in Hagi first, planted in the abandoned samurai gardens after 1868.

A first visit is Iwakuni and Shimonoseki, which bookend the prefecture and are both easy. The Kintai bridge is a five-arch wooden span rebuilt without nails and it is genuinely a piece of engineering rather than a photograph; Shimonoseki sits on the strait between Honshu and Kyushu with a fish market, a pufferfish trade and a tunnel you can walk under the sea to another island.

A second visit takes a car up to the north coast: Hagi, a castle town that produced a disproportionate number of the men who made the Meiji Restoration and still has its samurai streets, and Motonosumi's torii running down a cliff to the sea. Add Akiyoshidai's plateau and its cave on the way back and you have the prefecture that the shinkansen line hides.