It’s no miracle that only one of our regulars (hi John!) arrived here before me. The Iwami Ginzan (“ginzan” meaning silver mountain) is located on the northern coast of Honshu, in an area without big cities. The shinkansen takes the route along the south coast, swiftly passing this formerly remote region. To reach it, I took a regular train from Okayama to Izumo (3 hours), and then it takes another local train (45 minutes) and a local bus (25 minutes) to get to Omori – the village at the heart of this WHS.

They are prepared though to receive visitors. The lady at the information office at Odashi station came running out to me at the bus stop to supply me with several glossy brochures in English. One of these included an offer that I had not encountered on my travels before: foreigners get a discount! If you show your passport to prove that you’re not Japanese, you get 100-300 Yen off at each of the major sites to visit in the WHS area.

I started my visit at the lower end of Omori town. One of the first older buildings here (the Former Magistrate’s Office) holds the Iwami Ginzan Museum. A 20-minute video in English was started for me. It explained Iwami Ginzan’s history, but quite superficial and I did not get more from it than by reading the nomination file during my preparation. The OUV of the site is a bit sketchy, and ICOMOS had recommended a deferral in 2007. But the site got in anyway at the WHC meeting.

I walked on further into the valley, through the quiet streets of the town where many of the shops seemed to be closed. Besides mining relics, the site also includes a number of temples and shrines that are related to the mining period. The most impressive surely is the Rakan-ji, a temple built into a cliff where 2 caves hold 250 Buddhist arhat statues each.

The remains of the mine are located about 2 km north of the town. It’s a fine walk along the Ginzan Trail, through the forest. Next to the trail lie various remains, such as graves, small mine shafts (600), refineries and workshops. Ryugenju Mabu mine shaft is one of the biggest that has been discovered, and it is open to tourists. You can walk underground for a few hundred meters, not very spectacular I have to say. It shows that this indeed is a very “relict” cultural landscape, mining was already abandoned in the 1920s.

My general feeling after visiting this WHS also was that it all was quite “dead” and that it had not come to life for me what had happened here when the silver was mined. Probably the Shimizudani Refinery Ruines were the most memorable part, though these are a very late (1893) addition.