Hidden Gems Across Japan
1,610 spots
Illustration — not a photographAizu Sauce Katsudon
A katsudon almost everywhere in Japan means pork cutlet simmered with onion and egg. In Aizu it does not. Here the cutle…
Soma Nomaoi
Soma Nomaoi is a thousand-year-old military exercise that never stopped being one. Several hundred riders in genuine fam…
Yonomori Cherry Tunnel
Yonomori in Tomioka has an avenue of about 420 cherry trees running for 2.2 kilometres, planted from the Meiji period on…
Iwaki 3.11 Memorial and Revitalization Museum
Usuiso, on the Iwaki coast, lost most of its houses and a large number of its residents to the tsunami in March 2011. Th…
Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum
Futaba is the town the Fukushima Daiichi plant stands in. It was evacuated entirely in March 2011 and remained closed fo…
Shirakawa Komine Castle
Shirakawa was the gate to the north — the barrier on the old road where the Japanese state ended and the frontier began,…
Tora Shokudo
Shirakawa ramen is a soy-based bowl on a stock of chicken bone, pork bone and vegetables, with flat hand-cut noodles tha…
Kasumigajo Park
Nihonmatsu Castle was the seat of the Niwa clan and is one of Japan's hundred fine castles, listed alongside Tsuruga and…
Kurozuka
Adachigahara is the setting of one of the oldest and darkest stories in Japanese folklore: an old woman living alone in…
Takashiba Dekoyashiki
Deko is an old word for a doll, and Takashiba is the hamlet the dolls come from. Four workshops still stand here, famili…
Tadami
Tadami is at the western edge of Fukushima against the Niigata border, and it is the only UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in To…
To-no-Hetsuri
Hetsuri is an Aizu dialect word for a cliff along a river, and this one has been cut by the Okawa for more than a millio…
Yunokami Onsen Station
Yunokami Onsen is the only station in Japan with a thatched roof. It was rebuilt in that form in 1987 to echo the post-t…
Tokusa Onsen Iwaburo
Tokusa is called one of Aizu's hidden springs and the bath is exactly that: a rock pool under a simple roof, built into…
Hinoemata Kabuki
Hinoemata is a village of a few hundred people in the mountains at the far south-west corner of Fukushima, on the approa…
Attaka-yu
Takayu sits at around 750 metres on the road up to the Bandai-Azuma Skyline and its water is white sulphur — properly cl…
Sabako-yu
Iizaka is one of the three famous hot springs of the old Oshu road and Sabako-yu is its oldest bath. Basho is recorded a…
Manpuku
After the war a great many people repatriated from Manchuria settled in Fukushima City, and some of them opened shops ma…
Jododaira
The Bandai-Azuma Skyline climbs from Fukushima City into the Azuma volcanic range and tops out at Jododaira, 1,600 metre…
Babahera Ice
From March to November, on roadsides and at events across Akita, women sit under pink and yellow parasols beside metal d…
Sato Yoske Head Shop
Inaniwa udon is flat, thin, translucent and unusually smooth, and it is made by hand in a process that takes four days:…
Gono Line and Resort Shirakami
The Gono Line runs 147 kilometres from Higashi-Noshiro in Akita to Kawabe in Aomori, and for about eighty of them it is…
Tsuchizaki Float Festival
Tsuchizaki was Akita's port, and its shrine festival has been running since the eighteenth century. On 20 and 21 July ea…
Akita Folk Performing Arts Hall
Akita has an unusual concentration of surviving folk performance — the Kanto pole-balancing of the city, the Tsuchizaki…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.