Asakura Akizukijo Castle Town Walk

Akizuki, a small post town in the mountains of Asakura City, contains one of Fukuoka's most complete and least-photographed examples of Edo-period townscape. The castle — built in 1203 and destroyed in the Meiji land reforms — survives only as a stone gate (nagayamon) at the end of a long stone-paved approach. That approach, lined with cedar-bark walls and old merchant houses, is the destination.

The town is at its most famous in spring, when the cedar-lined approach (called Sugi no Baba) is covered in fallen cherry blossoms — a photographic effect so perfect that it looks artificial. In autumn, the maple-lined approach to the Akizuki Shrine produces a tunnel of orange and red that is one of Kyushu's finest foliage walks. The population is 500 people; annual visitors number in the hundreds of thousands in peak season.