Tomonoura: A Place We're Still Figuring Out

Every summer, we make Kyoto our base for about a month.

Partly because we love the city.

But also because Kyoto gives us access to an enormous part of western Japan.

There are mountains to the north. The coast beyond Osaka and Kobe. Old towns scattered through Kansai. And, if you're willing to spend enough time on trains, the islands and port towns of the Seto Inland Sea.

We also happen to love the Japanese summer.

The humidity can be relentless.

The rain can ruin perfectly good plans.

But it turns everything impossibly green.

So in the summer of 2024, armed with a Kansai Wide Area Pass and a five-year-old who had already become unusually accustomed to Japanese trains, we spent much of our time exploring.

One place kept appearing in travel journals.

Tomonoura.

An old port town on the Seto Inland Sea. A place associated with the inspiration for Studio Ghibli's Ponyo, and used as a filming location in The Wolverine.

Surely, we thought, there must be something very special here.

So we decided to find out.

First, Cheesecake

Our actual destination that day was Takamatsu.

We wanted to visit Ritsurin Garden, but Tomonoura seemed to fit neatly enough into the journey that we decided to stop there first.

On the way through Osaka, we also decided to investigate another thing we'd heard far too much about.

Rikuro's famous jiggly cheesecake.

We bought one at the station.

It was good.

But as a self-proclaimed connoisseur of cake, I couldn't quite understand the obsession.

The raisins at the bottom seemed particularly confusing.

Yash and Shivani abandoned it after the first slice.

Which meant I had to finish the rest.

There are worse problems to have.

Japan does desserts exceptionally well. This particular one simply wasn't going onto our list of things we'd cross Osaka to eat again.

In hindsight, that cheesecake was a strangely appropriate beginning to the day.

Sometimes something can be perfectly good and still not quite live up to the expectations you've built around it.

Tomonoura was about to leave us with a similar question.

The Long Way to Tomonoura

Getting there isn't particularly difficult.

It just takes time.

From Kyoto, we travelled by Shinkansen through Osaka and onwards to Fukuyama.

Fukuyama itself gives you one of those wonderfully Japanese arrivals where history and modern infrastructure seem to have been placed almost on top of each other.

Fukuyama Castle sits immediately beside the station, its stone walls and grounds visible from the Shinkansen platforms.

But Tomonoura is still some distance away.

From Fukuyama Station, you transfer onto a local bus that winds its way south towards the coast.

By the time we reached Tomonoura, we'd spent somewhere around three hours travelling.

Perhaps that should have told us something.

Tomonoura may simply not be a place designed to be squeezed into a day trip from Kyoto.

Kurashiki, Himeji or even Hiroshima would make more natural starting points.

But we'd travelled through the Seto Inland Sea before.

And Onomichi — still one of our favourite small towns in Japan — had set the bar rather high.

So we arrived excited.

Not Quite the Arrival We'd Imagined

We stepped off the bus with only a couple of other passengers.

And almost immediately heard it.

A drill.

The harbour was undergoing construction, and the sound seemed to echo across the waterfront.

I still have the video from that afternoon.

You can see the Seto Inland Sea.

You can see the old harbour.

And over almost everything, you can hear drilling.

Obviously, that wasn't Tomonoura's fault.

Places are alive. Roads get repaired. Harbours get rebuilt. The town we visited in the summer of 2024 may already feel different today.

But travel is experienced as you find it.

And on that particular afternoon, our first instinct wasn't to sit beside the harbour and take it all in.

It was to get away from the noise.

The port itself was also much quieter than we'd imagined.

Few shops appeared to be open.

There wasn't much activity around the waterfront.

So we walked towards the old town instead.

The Tomonoura We Had Come to See

This is where things became more interesting.

Tomonoura's history is inseparable from the sea.

During the age of sailing ships, vessels travelling through the Seto Inland Sea would stop here while waiting for favourable tides.

That passing maritime traffic helped the town prosper.

And traces of that history remain.

The most recognisable is the Joyato Lighthouse, which has become something of a symbol of Tomonoura.

From there, we wandered into the narrow lanes of the old town.

Wooden facades.

Old homes sitting almost shoulder to shoulder.

Little shops selling rice crackers and local specialities.

The streets around places such as the Ota Residence and Irohamaru Museum still carry the shape of an older port town.

And yes, it is beautiful.

We took plenty of photographs.

We wandered into shops.

We turned down lanes simply because they looked interesting.

For a while, we found the Tomonoura we'd seen in photographs.

But the old centre is small.

And fairly quickly, we found ourselves asking:

What next?

Perhaps We Were Asking the Wrong Question

There are temples and shrines around Tomonoura.

There are museums.

There are viewpoints.

You can certainly construct a list of things to see.

But somehow, that didn't feel like the point of the town.

And this is where our experience of Onomichi kept coming back to us.

We don't love Onomichi because of one particular temple.

We love it because of how everything fits together.

The harbour.

The shopping arcade.

The ropeway.

The hills.

The temples scattered along the walk down.

The cats.

The trains running beside the sea.

The constantly changing views of the Seto Inland Sea.

You don't finish one attraction and wonder what comes next.

The town itself keeps pulling you forward.

On that first visit, Tomonoura didn't quite do that for us.

But perhaps that says as much about how we visited as it does about the place.

Maybe Tomonoura Needs a Night

We had arrived with another destination waiting for us.

Okayama.

We were travelling with a five-year-old.

It was the middle of a humid Japanese summer.

And we'd already spent hours getting there.

Those things matter.

Perhaps Tomonoura isn't somewhere you arrive with a timetable.

Perhaps you stay the night.

Watch the day-trippers leave.

Walk through the harbour in the evening.

Wake up early.

Take a boat.

Sit somewhere without wondering what comes next.

Perhaps the mistake was expecting Tomonoura to fill our day when the better experience would have been allowing Tomonoura to slow it down.

We don't know yet.

And that's precisely why we want to return.

Not Every Scouting Trip Needs an Answer

When you spend enough time travelling through Japan, you constantly make judgement calls.

Time matters.

Money matters.

Energy matters.

Especially when travelling as a family.

We cannot spend three days understanding every town we encounter.

Sometimes a place immediately makes sense.

Takayama did.

Onomichi did.

Hida Furukawa did.

Others take longer.

Tomonoura, for us, belongs in that second group.

We liked it.

We could see its beauty.

We could understand why people recommend it.

But after our first visit, we wouldn't tell someone staying in Kyoto to dedicate an entire day simply to travelling there and back.

Not yet.

Another visit might change our perspective completely.

And we're perfectly happy to let it.

How We Would Visit Tomonoura Next Time

We wouldn't make a dedicated day trip from Kyoto simply for Tomonoura.

Not because there is anything wrong with the town.

But because Japan asks you to make choices.

There are only so many days in a journey, and in terms of the experiences available elsewhere in the country, we think there are places where that time can be spent more meaningfully.

Tomonoura begins to make much more sense when it becomes part of a wider journey through the Seto Inland Sea.

If we returned, we would probably pair it with Kurashiki and Onomichi rather than travel all the way from Kyoto simply to spend a few hours here.

Kurashiki brings its beautifully preserved historic quarter and canals.

Onomichi brings the hills, temples, local neighbourhoods and extraordinary views across the Seto Inland Sea.

And Tomonoura adds something different again — the atmosphere and history of an old port town.

Together, we suspect those places could make for a wonderful few days in western Japan.

Tomonoura on its own is harder for us to recommend.

Perhaps an overnight stay would change that.

Perhaps seeing the harbour early in the morning or after the day visitors have disappeared would reveal the side of the town we missed.

But based on our first visit, if someone asked us whether they should give Tomonoura an entire day of a first or second journey to Japan, our answer would probably be:

There are other places we'd go first.

That may change when we return.

For now, it feels like the fairest recommendation we can give.

Who Might Love Tomonoura?

Tomonoura could work beautifully for travellers already exploring the Seto Inland Sea.

Especially those who enjoy historic port towns, old wooden streets and places where the atmosphere matters more than a long list of attractions.

It may also suit travellers who are comfortable slowing down.

People who don't need every hour accounted for.

And people willing to stay long enough for a town to reveal itself gradually.

If you're already around Fukuyama or travelling through this part of western Japan, the equation changes considerably.

Our Verdict — For Now

Tomonoura is beautiful.

Its old streets deserve to be wandered.

Its maritime history is fascinating.

And there is something compelling about a little port town that has survived while the ships, industries and rhythms that once sustained it have changed around it.

But we're not ready to tell you that we've figured Tomonoura out.

Perhaps it needs to be paired with somewhere else.

Perhaps it needs a night.

Perhaps we simply caught it on the wrong afternoon.

Or perhaps another visit will confirm exactly what we felt the first time.

That's the joy of returning to Japan.

You don't have to decide everything on the first visit.

For now, Tomonoura hasn't found a place on a Beyond Tokyo journey.

But it has given us enough reason to go back.

And sometimes, that's where a place begins.

Why It Matters to Beyond Tokyo

We don't explore Japan looking for places to add to an itinerary.

We explore because we're curious.

Sometimes those journeys lead somewhere that immediately becomes part of Beyond Tokyo.

Sometimes they don't.

That distinction matters.

A place doesn't earn its way onto one of our journeys simply because it's beautiful, historic or appears on lists of Japan's hidden gems.

It has to add something.

It has to make sense within the rhythm of the journey.

And, most importantly, we have to understand why we're taking our travellers there.

We don't have that answer for Tomonoura yet.

So we'll return.

Perhaps we'll stay longer.

Perhaps we'll approach it differently.

And perhaps one day Tomonoura will find its place on a Beyond Tokyo journey.

Until then, we're happy simply to keep figuring it out.

And from Tomonoura, we got back onto the bus, returned to the railway and continued towards Okayama.

Korakuen Garden was waiting.

But that deserves a story of its own.