My friend, who lives in yamaguchi just wrote this book, there’s a short travel section in the back. Beyond all the breweries in the book Hagi, Hofu and Iwakuni are all high on my list.

The other thing you can do to get to/from the japan sea coast is take Japan’s last regularly scheduled sleeper train, or at least the half of it that goes to Izumo, the sunrise Izumo. I did that ride in 2019 and it’s definitely worth it.