Hidden Gems Across Japan
1,610 spots
Kashima Jingu
Kashima Jingu enshrines Takemikazuchi, the thunder and sword deity who in the myths subdues the land and, in later belie…
Nakaminato Fish Market
Nakaminato is a working fishing port on the Ibaraki coast and the market beside it is where the boats' catch is sold dir…
Ushiku Chateau
Kamiya Denbei made his money on Denki Bran, the brandy-based liqueur still served at his bar in Asakusa, and in 1903 he…
Seizanso
Tokugawa Mitsukuni is one of the most recognisable figures in Japan — as Mito Komon, the disguised elderly lord of a lon…
Hananuki Gorge
Hananuki is a narrow river valley in the hills behind Takahagi, and the thing everyone comes for is a sixty-metre footbr…
Ryujin Suspension Bridge
The Ryujin bridge is a pedestrian span 375 metres long, strung 100 metres above a dammed gorge in the hills of Hitachiot…
Makabe Historic District
Makabe began as the castle town of the medieval Makabe clan and grew into a market town under the Tokugawa, and the stre…
Izura Rokkakudo
Okakura Tenshin wrote The Book of Tea, ran the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, curated Asian art in Boston, and argued that A…
Tsukimachi Falls
Tsukimachi is 17 metres high and 12 metres wide and comes down in three separate strands, and its local name is the fall…
Oiwa Shrine
Mt. Oiwa is described in local record as the oldest sacred mountain in the old province of Hitachi, and the shrine at it…
Ichihara Lakeside Museum
A 1990s municipal sculpture museum on the shore of a reservoir in inland Chiba was, by the early 2010s, the kind of plac…
Namero and Sanga-yaki
Namero is a fisherman's dish and the method explains the name. Horse mackerel or sardine, filleted on a moving boat, cho…
Shiramazu Flower Fields
The southern tip of the Boso peninsula is warm enough that flowers grow outdoors through the winter, and the coast road…
Futtsu Cape Observation Tower
Futtsu is a sand spit that runs five kilometres out into Tokyo Bay, narrowing to almost nothing, and at the very end of…
Tainoura
Sea bream are deep-water fish that do not normally school at the surface. In the bay at Kominato they do, in numbers, an…
Hoki Museum
Hoki is the first museum in Japan devoted entirely to realist painting — work so precisely rendered that at a distance i…
Sakura Samurai Houses
Sakura was a castle town of the Hotta clan, close enough to Edo that its domain school and its samurai mattered, and thr…
National Museum of Japanese History
This is the national museum for the history of Japan, and it is not in Tokyo — it is on the grounds of the old Sakura ca…
Boso Peninsula Railway Crossing
Two small railways meet end to end at a station in the middle of nowhere and, between them, cross the Boso peninsula. Th…
Okamoto Pier
A wooden pier about 160 metres long, built in 1921 to land fish and out of that use since 1961, running straight out fro…
Ezawa
Katsuura tantanmen is not Sichuan tantanmen and does not pretend to be. There is no sesame paste and no peanut. It is a…
Katsuura Morning Market
The lord of Katsuura castle started this market in 1591 to get farmers and fishermen trading with each other, and it has…
Awamata Falls
Awamata is a broad shallow fall about thirty metres high on the upper Yoro river, and it is unlike most Japanese waterfa…
Byobugaura
Ten kilometres of sea cliff, forty to fifty metres high, running south-west from Choshi along the Pacific with nothing i…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.