Onsens and Sand

We made our way to the town of Yunotsu on the northern San-In coast of Honshu. We planned to visit some onsens in Yunotsu, then continue on our way to Nima, where we had booked a night in the town`s youth hostel / buddhist temple in one. The train journey was not too bad, though compared to the Shinkansen, they were quite slow, especially the final local train to Yonotsu which consisted of a single carriage and engine combined with the train driver in a small booth at the front operating the controls. The countryside we passed through was very pretty, and as it was so green reminded us of rural England, a complete contrast to the big cities that we experienced early in our trip.

Bike

Yunotsu is a very quiet town, which does not get many foreign visitors. It is on the sea, and a consequence has been used as a port for exporting silver from the mines that dot the local area since the 15th century. We found an onsen that was well-known in the local area for its very hot mineral enriched water, and soon got talking to the owner, Yoko, who spoke good English, after having spent many years living in Australia. The water was extremly hot, so hot that we could only spend about  1 minute at a time inside. Afterwards Yoko offered to drop us off at the region`s most famous attraction, an old silver mine. On the way, she gave us a tour of her house, which is the oldest in the town - very traditional Japanese rooms and a lovely garden.

Jon looking scary

On the way to the silver mine, we dropped our bags off at the hostel and met the temple priest,our host for night who was nice but could not speak much English. We then arrived at the silver mine, said our goodbyes and thanks to Yoko who had recommended a soba noodle restaurant for us to try. We set off to the mine, walking up a hill, the countryside around was stunning . It was so good to be really in the middle of the nature again, as so much of Japan is crowded and built up. Lots of the locals keep small plots of lands for growing vegetables, including tomatoes, courgettes, onions, too many to mention. The silver mine itself was cold and we could not really understand that much as there was only a small leaflet in English, but we did see some of the deposits of silver that still remain in the mine, which was finally closed in 1923.@We had to wait quite a long time for the bus to drop us back in Nima where we picked up some food before being picked up by the lady from the hostel. She offered to cook us some food so we decided to have that instead. 

Sand museum

We spent some time chatting with our hosts and some guests of the hostel, and then turned in as we were quite tired.

The next morning we visited the Nima Sand museum, dedicated to sand before heading on the train up to Matsue our next stop.The town of Nima is well known for its `singing sand` , if you put it in a small bowl and push it down with a small implement, say a pestle, it makes a strange singing sound. I did not really understand it until I tried it for myself and it actually works. Something to do with the small size of the sand grains I think. Anyway as it was raining we headed under the protection of our 1 umbrella@(given to us as a present by the hostel lady) to the station to catch our train. Unfortunately as it is June , or rainy season in Japan, it has been raining a lot here at the moment, and is always gray.

Sand museum building

Silver

Sunset

The family

Tunnel entrance