The Sunset in Tomonoura

Hello there, this is Masa from J-Hoppers Hiroshima :)

Last weekend, I took another staff of this hostel, Chika to my Hometown, Fukuyama.

Fukuyama is the second biggest city in Hiroshima located on the east side of the prefecture. It takes about 2 hours either by bus or train from Hiroshima city.

Recently, it became famous because of Hayao Miyazaki's movie, "Ponyo."
The village where the story takes place is inspired by Tomonoura.

It is a small seaside town in the south of Fukuyama. When Hayao Miyazaki had a trip to Tomonoura with his employees, he fail in love with thw town. And then he came back and rented a house there for 2 months to get ideas for the movie.


Anyway, it was Chika's first visit to Fukuyama, so I took her to Tomonoura.

We took very interesting Sauna style Onsen first.
(Miyoko has posted about it before, so please check her old post.)

After we got refreshed, we walked around the town.
It was crowded with many tourist in the daytime, but there were almost nobody at the sunset.

It was so quiet, but very pretty.


There is the historical townscape on old stone-paved paths.
Enjoy exploring the town with feeling to be in the cute movie!