Yamaguchi prefecture's Akiyoshido deserves more than one blog post devoted to it! (Photo-essay)

"Hong Kong will no longer allow incoming travellers who test positive for Covid-19 antibodies to undergo a shorter compulsory quarantine, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Tuesday."  Decisions such as these, that are contributing to Hong Kong being isolated from the rest of the world, are making some people with relatives and roots in other territories decide to leave Hong Kong (along with the imposition of China's security law on Hong Kong).   And many Hong Kongers are despairing about the low likelihood of being able to leave for some time to come for leisure travel -- this despite Hong Kong having a total of three new Wuhan coronavirus cases (and just one of them locally transmitted) today -- for residents of this physically small territory who, prior to the pandemic, were among the most well-travelled people on Earth.  

 

When, I wonder, will I able to travel for pleasure to Japan again?  For now, I can do so only in my dreams and vicariously (through doing such as watching Japanese movies and Funassyi videos, reading Japanese books (my current favorite Japanese writer is Keigo Higashino) and eating Japanese food).  And by looking at the photos from my Japan trips -- which led me to think that I shouldn't have sold this blog's visitors short with regards to photos of Yamaguchi prefecture's amazing Akiyoshido (which I visited back in October 2019).  So here's another photo-essay of Japan's largest limestone cave, approximately one kilometer of which is open to the public to explore.  Enjoy?! :)

 

Akiyoshido has three public entrances/exists.  The one I opted for

was the one closest to the Akiyoshidai plateau

 

Puppet Ponyo in the "300 Million-Year-Time-Tunnel" (whose 

information panels highlight the cave's estimated age)

 

One of Akiyoshido's star attractions is the
50 feet high Koganebashira (Golden Pillar)

 

Another geological formation inside the cave that merits 

a cool name: Chimachida (The 10,000 Rice Fields --

because that's what it supposedly resembles!)

 

Does this look like Mount Fuji to you?  

Because that's what it's called! ;b

 

An unnamed section of the cave that I thought was pretty cool,

not least because a stream runs through it

 

All too soon, it was time to emerge from the cave

-- in my case, by way of this exit 

 

Having seen that this stream/river has underwater origins

makes it all the more cooler to me :)