Mine


 * See also Mining tourism.

Mine (美祢市 Mine-shi, pron. mee-neh not like English "mine") is a city in Yamaguchi Prefecture. It has about 26,000 residents (as of 2016).

Understand
The name literally means "beautiful ancestral shrine", although the name may also have come from the city being surrounded by mountain peaks, or mine (峰) in Japanese. It's probably a coincidence that there was mining at the nearby Yamato Mine (previously called Ofuku Mine) during the 20th century.

Akiyoshi is made of limestone, which is believed to have developed from coral reefs back in the Paleozoic era. Trees said to have appeared in the area for the first time 500,000 years ago. Many fossils from ancient Japanese rhinoceroses, tigers, and elephants have been excavated from the plateau, giving scientists some idea of what sorts of creatures first inhabited the region. Because the area is made of limestone, Akiyoshi Cave, the largest cave in Japan, formed over a span of 300,000 years. Today the cave is estimated to be 420,000 m³.

Akiyoshidai is largely covered with grass. Its grassland is the second largest in Japan and is kept by burning off dead grass in February. You can see thousands of limestone rocks all around Akiyoshidai, as is characteristic of karst.

Tourist information site
The local tourist association has a multilingual guide site.

Go next

 * Hagi
 * Yamaguchi
 * Nagato
 * Ube
 * Sanyoonoda
 * Shimonoseki
 * Hofu
 * Shunan