After having crossed the Hiroshima-Yamaguchi Prefectural Border we found ourselves in the Yamaguchi Prefecture. Since Japan is such a mountainous country there are dozens - even hundreds - of tunnels on the way owing to the endless undulation. Don't worry, there is no need to pay for each tunnel. You only pay once for the toll-road and all the tunnels on the way are yours. During most of the 2-hour journey we saw isolated Japanese bungalows, lumber yards and mills. These bungalows are sparsely scattered in the vast forests along the plains and small hills. The forests are most probably artificial because we noted that one species of trees, which I suppose belonging either to the Tsuga family or the Pinus family, predominated over all other trees in the forests. These trees were neatly and densely arrayed. They had straight and very tall trunks and conical tops much resembling those of ordinary pines. It was such an awesome sight.
We approached the tip of Yamaguchi Prefecture where the small town of Shimonoseki is located. We never visited the actual town of Shimonoseki. We only stopped at a service station adjacent to the Kanmon Bridge (see below) to have lunch. Each of us had a generous portion of pork cutlet and rice but not many of us could possibly finish our portions because we'd already had a breakfast buffet only 3 hours before!
What makes the town of Shimonoseki so special is that somewhere in the
outskirts of the town lies the famous
Kanmon Bridge,
which is one of the 2 gateways for wheels linking Honshu and Kyushu (the
other one being the neighbouring Kanmon Sub-railway). The bridge is only some
640 metres, which is roughly 0.4 miles. So crossing the strait between Honshu
and Kyushu is just like crossing the Victoria Harbour in HongKong!
Click on the picture below for a pictorial map (the far end is Kyushu):
After lunch we crossed the Kanmon Bridge. At the other end of the bridge we found ourselves in the Fukuoka Prefecture of Kyushu. We moved on, crossed the Fukuoka-Oita Prefectural Boundary into the Oita Prefecture.
