ONOMICHI, Japan -- In late October, as the autumn leaves were turning yellow, I sat on the deck of a ferry crossing part of the Seto Inland Sea, a 440-kilometer-long body of water that separates the large Japanese islands of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu and connects the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Japan.
The inland sea is an important shipping channel, connecting the Pacific with the major industrial centers in Japan's Kansai region, which include the major ports of Osaka and Kobe. But it also includes the Setouchi region, a largely rural area that attracts far fewer tourists than the so-called Golden Route connecting Tokyo, Mount Fuji, Kyoto and Osaka.
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