Onomichi 尾道市, Honshu, 2025
Ononmichi is split between the working side of the river — with its shipbuilding, chemical and manufacturing industries — and the playing side — with loads of tourists occupying the hotels along the waterfront before setting out to cycle the Shimanami Kaido over the Seto Sea.
On the playing side, I heard American English-language teachers grumbling about work, Australian pensioners carousing over beers, Cantonese-speaking women trying to decide which island to visit, and lycra-clad German students joking too loudly while ramming their huge rucksacks into the station lockers. Of all the tourists, though, I reserve a special place in the "hell-is-other-people" category for the young and sour-faced English woman who declined to move her iPad so I could sit down in a coffee shop. There are whirlpools in the Seto Sea: perhaps she fell into one?
Onomichi 尾道市, Honshu, 2025
Ononmichi is split between the working side of the river — with its shipbuilding, chemical and manufacturing industries — and the playing side — with loads of tourists occupying the hotels along the waterfront before setting out to cycle the Shimanami Kaido over the Seto Sea.
On the playing side, I heard American English-language teachers grumbling about work, Australian pensioners carousing over beers, Cantonese-speaking women trying to decide which island to visit, and lycra-clad German students joking too loudly while ramming their huge rucksacks into the station lockers. Of all the tourists, though, I reserve a special place in the "hell-is-other-people" category for the young and sour-faced English woman who declined to move her iPad so I could sit down in a coffee shop. There are whirlpools in the Seto Sea: perhaps she fell into one?