Aichi

The warlord who broke the old order, the commander who completed the conquest, and the founder of the dynasty that governed for the next two and a half centuries were all born in what is now this prefecture, within a few decades of each other. That is a remarkable concentration and it is the strongest reason to spend a day here rather than simply changing trains.

It is also unusually easy to follow on the ground, because the relevant castles and birthplaces are close enough to visit in sequence by ordinary trains — the great rebuilt castle in the city, an original keep upriver with a preserved street below it, and the sites east toward the old highway. The local museums treat the period as one continuous story rather than three separate ones, which is the right framing and the thing you cannot get from a temple in the old capital.

Two days, and Aichi is better understood as a base than a destination. Nagoya sits at the centre of the country's rail network, which makes it an efficient place to sleep and an easy place to leave — Kyoto is thirty-five minutes away by shinkansen, Gifu twenty minutes, Ise about ninety.

Within the prefecture: Nagoya itself is a day, with a castle, a strong museum of industry and a food culture that locals defend vigorously. Inuyama, forty minutes north, has one of the surviving original castle keeps and a preserved street below it. Tokoname on the peninsula toward the airport is a pottery town with a walkable kiln trail, and Seto and Tajimi over the Gifu border complete a ceramics circuit.

Three days lets you do Nagoya, Inuyama and one of the pottery towns. Beyond that, the returns come from using Aichi as a hub rather than exploring it.

Nagoya is the best-connected inland city in Japan: the Tokaido Shinkansen reaches it in about 100 minutes from Tokyo and 50 from Shin-Osaka, and all services stop. Chubu Centrair International Airport sits on an artificial island 30 minutes away by Meitetsu train. Within the city, two subway lines and a loop line cover almost everything, and the Meitetsu and Kintetsu networks reach Inuyama, Okazaki and out towards Ise. Inuyama Castle and Meiji-mura are both straightforward day trips by train and bus. A car is only worth it for the Chita and Atsumi peninsulas.

The coffee shops here have a custom that visitors nearly always discover by accident: order a drink in the morning and it arrives accompanied by toast, an egg and often more, at no extra charge. It is a genuine regional institution rather than a promotion, it has been going for decades, and the competition between shops has pushed some of them to absurd generosity.

It is worth building a morning around at least once. The shops open early, they are everywhere from station arcades to suburban corners, and the older ones have an interior of dark wood, velour seating and newspapers on poles that has largely disappeared elsewhere. Sit in, do not take away. The associated local speciality — thick-cut toast with sweet bean paste and butter — sounds wrong and is not, and this is the only place where ordering it is unremarkable.

Nagoya cooks with red haccho miso, aged in cedar barrels under stone weights in Okazaki, and it drives most of the local dishes: miso katsu, miso nikomi udon, doteni. Hitsumabushi is grilled eel over rice eaten in three stages — plain, with condiments, then with broth poured over. Tebasaki are peppery fried chicken wings from a Nagoya izakaya chain that spread nationally. Ogura toast, thick bread with sweet azuki paste, comes from the city's morning-service coffee shop culture, where an ordered coffee brings breakfast with it.

Nagoya in August is among the hotter and more humid places in Japan and the city has little shade; the museums and the underground shopping city are the sensible response rather than a walking itinerary. Golden Week fills the castle and the pottery towns.

There is no season that ruins this prefecture, which is part of its usefulness — it works as a wet-weather or winter base when the mountains around it are closed. The thing to plan around instead is the festival calendar: several of the region's float festivals fall in spring and autumn and are worth arranging a night around, but they also book out the small towns that host them.

Trains, comprehensively. Nagoya's private and JR lines reach every town in the prefecture frequently, the airport has a fast rail link, and the subway covers the city. A car adds nothing except parking costs.

The one thing worth knowing is that the private railway network here is genuinely useful rather than a supplement — several of the places worth visiting, including Inuyama and Tokoname, are on private lines rather than JR, so a rail pass covering only JR will not cover them. Buy the local excursion tickets instead, which are cheap and cover the relevant lines and buses.

The Nobi plain is hot, humid and enclosed, with August highs above 35°C and little wind, so summer sightseeing is best done early or indoors. Winters are mild and dry with occasional light snow and January highs near 9°C. Spring and autumn are the comfortable stretches. Nagoya Castle's cherry blossoms open in late March, and the Tokugawa Garden colours in late November. The Inuyama Festival runs in early April with tiered floats and mechanical puppets. The Atsuta Festival falls on June 5. Trade fairs and factory shutdowns around Golden Week and Obon can distort hotel prices sharply.

A first visit is Nagoya as a hub, and the specific advice is to eat. This is a city with its own food canon — flat miso-stewed noodles, miso-glazed cutlet, chicken wings, a rice dish served three ways in the same bowl — and the local pride in it is the most interesting thing about the place. Add the castle and the industry museum, which explains how a textile-loom company became a car manufacturer and is far better than that sounds — the weaving hall still runs its looms, and the machines are demonstrated rather than left behind glass.

A second visit should be the ceramics. Tokoname, Seto and, across the border, Tajimi and Mino form one of the oldest continuous pottery regions in the country, with kiln trails you can walk, chimneys still standing, and workshops that sell directly. It is an entirely different prefecture from the one people pass through on the shinkansen, and a day of it costs less than an afternoon in Kyoto.