A drive along the Seto Inland Sea from Takehara took us to the charming Edo era port town of Mitarai that sits on the tip of Osaki Shimo-jima island. Like Takehara, Mitarai has a well preserved historical district but its relatively small size means that it’s easy to walk almost the length of the village along the waterfront. The drive out itself was scenic with the Akinada Islands linked by a series of bridges. The water, and mikan orange groves coupled with the quaint villages and varied bridges make this particularly picturesque. We opted to return to Takehara by ferry to give us a different viewpoint of the islands from the sea.

The actual drive time from Takehara to Mitarai is around two-and-a-half hours with a short stop across the bridge on Kami-Kamagari island. This is a particularly nice pit stop with a well-equipped snack shop and views of the Inland Sea. It’s also evident that this area is well known for its citrus fruit, especially mikan, a type of orange that is smaller than the usual Sunkist variety and more akin to a mandarin that’s easy to peel and eat. Mikan are excellent – very sweet – and the trees dominate the entire landscape, marching up the terraced hills.

Mitarai used to be a popular port during the Edo era, with ships stopping here to wait for more favorable sailing conditions. The town flourished during the 17th century and is well known for the number of tea houses and entertainment establishments that were set up during this time to service the sailors and traders.

Mitarai has a charming waterfront with the Sumiyoshi Shrine and a long stone pier and stone lantern that functions as a lighthouse marking one end of the town. We actually ended our visit here but it’s just as easy to start here and walk through the historic district.

After parking our car near the waterfront, we walked through Mitarai’s historic district to catch up with Tom Miyazawa Coulton – a professional photographer from the U.K. who recently settled in Mitarai with his wife. Tom has some unique and wonderfully taken postcards of this area. Before heading to his studio, we stopped by what used to be the house of one of Japan’s leading cartographers, Ino Tadataka, who mapped this coastline incredibly accurately by hand in the late 18th century.

But probably what is one of the more interesting buildings in Mitarai is one of the historic tea houses (“chaya”) or brothel for lack of a more elegant comparable term – these tea houses had classical entertainment as well. In one lurid story, the explanation why this tea house, Wakaebisu-ya, never had 100 oiran (courtesans) was because one of the older diva oiran killed an assistant by pouring boiling hot ink down her throat. As the younger girl was dying, she cursed the establishment. A so-called ink smear of her hand mixed with blood is apparently preserved on the wall upstairs in the room that the oiran shared. So through all the subsequent years, the 100th oiran candidate never stayed long. Anyway, whether the story is true or not, there’s something bone chilling about that room and there was no way I was going to take a picture there.

Here are some additional photos of the historic district. There are a few other notable historic buildings that can be visited including Otome-za, a well preserved 1930’s theatre.

Given that many eateries were closed for the year-end New Year celebration, we grabbed a simple lunch in an all purpose casual restaurant. Lunch consisted of ramen with some oden. Oden is stewed items, mainly tofu, egg and fish cake.

Behind the historic district is the Tenman Shrine and Mansuji Temple, both of which we walked to after lunch. These are small sites and so they don’t need a lot of time to visit, but it was a pleasant walk to do on a mild day after lunch. The shrine building looks somewhat unused but has a tunnel that you are meant to walk under for luck.

We opted to take the ferry back to Takehara so that we wouldn’t have to back track and to get a nice view of the islands from a different vantage point. Mitarai is a sleepy town and at risk of disappearing entirely with apparently around 60% of its buildings vacant. But it’s a great place to visit to get a good sense of an Edo period village and must have been quite different at its peak with all the sailors in town.

Some useful websites:

For the ferry guide and information: http://www.cruisehiroshima.com/files/cruisehiroshima_map_back.pdf

For some nice pics of the area – Tom Miyazawa Coulton’s website: http://www.tomcoulton.com