You probably all know the feeling, the dreadful frustration when there is some area in Vana'Diel which you can't enter whenever you please. The Toraimarai Canal is such a zone, unless you are from Windurst, you have to be in the company of a BLM, WHM and a RDM to activate the seal to become able to enter.
There is an alternative though, apparently you can access the Toraimarai Canal whenever you want after doing a row of quests. These quests are also known as the Rhinostery quests, so you most likely know where you can start them.
- Food For Thought
- Overnight Delivery
- Water Way to Go
- Blue Ribbon Blues
- Toraimarai Turmoil
These quests do take a while to complete, since they require you to travel whole the way through Vana'diel to do some errants and talk to various NPCs. They are actually just the thing if you caught yourself in a moment where you feel like taking a break from the usual XP, crafting or other routine activities. Thanks to the "Blue Ribbon Blues" quest, I even found out what the mysterious Bones in the Eldieme Necropolis were for.
When you start quest#5 "Toraimarai Turmoil", the friendly Rhinosterians will grant you the Rhinostery certificate which allows you to enter the Toraimarai Canal whenever you want to ! The gate can be found in the Northern part of Windurst walls, just go down the slope and talk to the Seven of Diamonds over there.
From now on you can enter the Toraimarai Canal all by yourself
Whoopdeedoo 
Now, of course there are not many reasons to go to this place. The three main reasons for being there is when you need to fight Fenrir, are heavily depressed or are questing for your BLM AF3 hat. The latter was reason enough for me to do all these quests. It's part of my preparation in requesting my AF, since I will be upgrading to AF+1.
Everyone knows my FFXI time has been greatly limited by work lately, but everytime I log on, I keep on being remembered of how much I love this game 
