Kanagawa Hidden Gems

Kanagawa packs three very different places into an hour of railway. Kamakura was the seat of Japan's first warrior government from 1185, chosen because hills enclose it on three sides and the sea closes the fourth, and the temples founded then are still spread through those valleys — which is why walking between them means climbing wooded ridges rather than crossing a grid. Yokohama is the opposite: a fishing village that the 1859 treaty ports turned into Japan's window on foreign trade, so the brick warehouses, the Chinatown and the Western hillside houses all date from that opening. Hakone is a volcanic caldera 800 metres up, still venting sulphur at Owakudani, with the water that fills its ryokan coming straight out of it. The prefecture is dense and largely urban, but Hakone and the Miura peninsula both feel a long way from the commuter lines that carry you to their doors.