My best Japan trip part X

From Matsue, I took a short break at 2 small cities, Okayama and Yonago, to change the train to Takayama. At Yonago, I really impressed about the strategy to develop this small city to become a tourism spot. Yonago is located in the northwest of Tottori Prefecture, it is 4 times smaller than Phuket island. This small city doesn’t have any beautiful place like other cities that I visited. However, the local government set a good tourism development strategy by using a
famous cartoon character as the symbol of the city to make the city more interested and it works.

Kitaro is the name of that cartoon. Kitaro is a boy born in a cemetery and, aside from his mostly-decayed father, the last living member of the Ghost Tribe. He lost his left eye, but his hair usually covers the empty socket. In this city I found pictures and sculptures of Kitaro and his friend in many places such as foot path, train, telephone booth and so on. This makes this small town more lively and interesting than before.

After the short city tour, I took a long train to the west mountainous area of Japan. The city of Takayama had taught me about the meaning of “the unexpected cold” which I will explain in the next part of my trip.