Yamaguchi is an understated city at the western end of Honshu, once rich enough under the Ouchi clan to be called the Kyoto of the West. It still has that older cultural thread: temple precincts, garden stones, quiet streets, and a famous pagoda that feels far removed from the faster cities on the Sanyo corridor.
The reason to come is Rurikoji's five-storied pagoda, a national treasure from the Muromachi period and one of Japan's finest wooden pagodas. Joeiji Temple adds Sesshu's dry-landscape garden, designed with the eye of an ink painter rather than a gardener trying to impress. Between them, Yamaguchi gives you a compact, low-crowd version of classical Japan.
The city has a second personality at Yuda Onsen, where hot-spring inns and public foot baths sit close to the centre. St. Francis Xavier Memorial Church adds an unexpected Christian layer, recalling Xavier's stay in Yamaguchi in the 1550s. Yamaguchi is not loud about itself, but it is one of the better cultural stops between Hiroshima and Kyushu.