Iwami Ginza

The world's largest hourglass, it runs for exactly one year turning every December 31 at midnight.

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Most mine entrances were about the size of a doggy door. The mine ran for 400 years and the used to employ 10 year old kids to do the digging.

Iwami Ginza Silver mine.

We reached the peak of tourism cheese today. We went to a sand museum. I know there are museums for shoes and other random objects, but this is one for sand. Who knew? Impressively only half of the museum was devoted to sand while the other half contained awesomely horrible galactica meets wildlife meets holistic therapy paintings. It made for an odd combination. 

We also hit up the ever fascinating silver mines which provided the majority of Japans silver for over 400 years. The day was then wrapped up with a scalding hot onsen to burn away the snow storm.

Oh and I got lost running. Then by some miracle and a farmer with good hand gestures and some english I came out of the forest literally on the opposite side of town from where I had started and only 4k from the hostel, not the 11 expected. I'm going off to polish my horseshoe.