It was a harbour for waiting out the tide. Tomonoura sits at the point where the tidal streams of the Inland Sea meet from east and west, and for centuries ships stopped here until the current turned in their favour. The equipment of such a harbour has survived more or less complete: the stone lantern that served as a light, the ganghi steps, the site of the harbour office. Together they let you see how a harbour built for waiting was actually put together.

The ganghi is a broad flight of stone steps running down into the water, so that a boat can be brought alongside at any state of the tide — indispensable where the level changes by metres and cargo has to move regardless. Tomo was designated an Important Preservation District in November 2017. Fukuyama's town centre is about thirty minutes away by car, the work here is fishing and lodging, and the lanes are narrow enough that most of the district is walked rather than driven. Climb the lanes on the slope behind the port and the view opens out onto the islands offshore.

A harbour where ships wait needs more built into it than one they pass through. People and vessels stayed for days at a time, so it required inns, places to eat, and somewhere to make repairs, and the result is a town constructed with more substance than its size would predict. Most of what remains at Tomo was produced by delay rather than by trade. The buildings are what a few thousand people's waiting, accumulated over several hundred years and spent in the same few streets, eventually turns into — which is a slower way to build a town, and a more thorough one.