La Collina Omihachiman

**Free to enter, including the factory.** No ticket and no booking for the baumkuchen production gallery, which is unusual for a factory viewing in Japan. **The roof is a working lawn.** Grass planted on the main building, mown by staff, and it changes completely between seasons. Fujimori's charred-timber and charcoal detailing is worth looking at up close. **Weekends are very busy.** This is the most visited site in the prefecture. A weekday morning is a different place. **The bread shop opens at 11:00 AM and sells out.** So does the freshly baked baumkuchen, which is sold warm and is the thing people queue for. **The paddies are farmed by the company.** Rice grown on site, and the seasonal state of the fields is part of the design rather than a backdrop. **Omihachiman's canal quarter is 15 minutes away.** The merchant town, the Hachimanbori canal and the ropeway are the historical half of the same day.