Hidden Gems Across Japan
1,610 spots
Bato Hiroshige Museum
Kengo Kuma built this museum in 2000, before he was internationally famous, and it is the building where his approach be…
Sessho-seki
The legend says that a nine-tailed fox, having failed to destroy the imperial court in the guise of a court lady, was hu…
Momijidani Suspension Bridge
The Momijidani bridge crosses a reservoir arm of the Shiobara gorge on a 320-metre span with no stiffening girder, which…
Hacchonoyu
There are four inns in the Okukinu hot spring group, at the head of the Kinugawa valley inside Nikko National Park, and…
Ryuokyo Gorge
Around twenty-two million years ago this was seabed, and undersea volcanism laid down the rock that the Kinugawa has sin…
Karasawayama Shrine
Karasawayama was a Fujiwara mountain castle held by the Sano family for centuries, and it is one of the few castles in t…
Oguraya
Sano ramen is defined by how the noodles are made. A length of green bamboo is anchored at one end and the maker sits on…
Izurusan Manganji
Manganji sits at the head of a narrow valley in the hills north of Tochigi City, founded according to its own account in…
Ohirasan Shrine
The approach to Ohirasan Shrine is about a thousand stone steps up the side of Mt. Ohira, and for two weeks in June it i…
Banna-ji Temple
Banna-ji was built in 1196 by Ashikaga Yoshikane as the clan temple of the family that would go on to hold the shogunate…
Ashikaga Gakko
Ashikaga Gakko is generally described as the oldest school in Japan. Its exact founding date is disputed — candidates ra…
Yunishigawa Onsen
The story Yunishigawa tells about itself is that survivors of the Taira clan, beaten at Dan-no-ura in 1185, fled into th…
Oya-ji Temple
Oya stone is the soft volcanic tuff that Utsunomiya is built out of, and Oya-ji is where it was first carved. The temple…
Wakayama Farm Bamboo Grove
Everybody photographs the bamboo at Arashiyama in Kyoto, shoulder to shoulder on a path a few metres wide. The largest b…
Kanmangafuchi Abyss
A twenty-minute walk from the Toshogu crowds, on the far bank of the Daiya River, a lava gorge runs between the trees an…
Hirasawa Kanga Ruins
In the eighth century the province of Hitachi was administered through district offices, and the one for Tsukuba distric…
Shizumine Furusato Park
Almost every cherry blossom site in Japan is somei-yoshino, the pale single-flowered clone that blooms and drops within…
Yokaren Peace Memorial Museum
The Yokaren was the Imperial Navy's preparatory flight training programme, and from 1939 the main training base was at T…
Howaen
Howaen began as the garden of a temple, was expanded by Tokugawa Mitsukuni in the seventeenth century, and is now a smal…
Hirakata Port Anko Nabe
Monkfish is ugly, gelatinous and almost entirely edible — the Japanese phrase is that seven parts of it can be eaten, in…
Hitachi Izumo Taisha
In 1992 the great shrine of Izumo in Shimane divided its deity and enshrined it here, on a hillside beside Route 50 in K…
Shunpu Manriso
Kitaoji Rosanjin was a calligrapher, a potter, a restaurateur and by most accounts extremely difficult to be around, and…
Amabiki Kannon
Amabikisan Rakuhoji is a hillside temple founded, by its own account, in 587, and for centuries it has been the place pe…
Ikisu Shrine
Ikisu is the third and least visited of the Toogoku Sanja, the three shrines of the east that Kashima and Katori complet…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.