Higashi-Hiroshimaで最も古い樹木はどれですか。
The oldest tree in Higashi-Hiroshima is the Great Ginkgo of Renko-ji, estimated at roughly 400 years old and measured at 5.2 to 5.3 metres round, standing in the temple precinct in Akitsu, on the city's southern coast. It is free to visit and a two-minute walk from Akitsu Station on the JR Kure Line.
The age is an estimate rather than a measurement, the same honest gap that applies to almost every giant ginkgo in Japan: no register anywhere carries a planting date for this tree, so the figure comes from its size and from local accounts that put it at around four centuries. Its closest rival for the title is the Meoto-sugi, a named husband-and-wife cedar pair on the summit of Mount Fukujo-ji above Saijo's sake breweries, dated only as "over three hundred years" in the same 1988 national giant-tree survey that measured the ginkgo. Both readings rest on girth rather than a ring count. What sets the ginkgo apart is how easy it is to reach: most of Higashi-Hiroshima's seventeen registered giants stand in shrine groves reachable only by car, spread across the hills above Toyosaka and Fukutomi, while this one is a short walk from a JR platform on the coast at Akitsu. See all seventeen remarkable trees of Higashi-Hiroshima.