Hidden Gems Across Japan
1,610 spots
Nishikigoi no Sato
Ornamental koi began here. Around two hundred years ago farmers in the Yamakoshi hills above Ojiya kept common carp in t…
Gyokusendo
Gyokusendo has been raising copper vessels by hammer since 1816. The technique, tsuiki-doki, starts from a single flat d…
Kojimaya Sohonten
Hegisoba is Tokamachi's soba, and what separates it from every other soba in Japan is the binder. Instead of wheat flour…
Sennen-zake Kikkawa
Murakami has been a salmon town since the Heian period, and in the eighteenth century a retainer named Aoto Buheiji work…
Hyoko
Hyoko is a small irrigation pond dug in the Edo period that became, almost by accident, the place where wild swans in Ja…
Iwanohara Vineyard
Kawakami Zenbei planted grapes here in 1890 and spent the rest of his life crossbreeding European vines with hardier sto…
Takada Sekaikan
Takada Sekaikan opened in 1911 as a theatre called Takada-za and converted to film a few years later. It has been showin…
Fukushimagata Lagoon
Fukushimagata is a 262-hectare freshwater lagoon on the northern edge of Niigata City, one of the last remnants of the w…
Tsukechi Gorge
The Tsukechi river runs off the Kiso mountains over a granite bed, and where it cuts through the gorge the water is a gr…
Nakatsugawa Kurikinton
The kurikinton of Nakatsugawa is not the glossy sweet-potato paste served at New Year elsewhere in Japan. It is chestnut…
Keichan
Keichan is chicken cut up, marinated in miso and cooked on a hot plate with cabbage. It comes from the Gujo and Gero are…
Masagosoba
Takayama ramen is called chuka soba locally and it is made differently from almost anywhere else: instead of keeping the…
Hirayu Great Falls
Hirayu Otaki drops 64 metres in a single fall on the edge of the Okuhida hot spring villages, one of Japan's hundred wat…
Gujo Odori
Gujo Odori is not a performance. There is no stage and no audience — the dance circles the streets of Gujo Hachiman arou…
Gifu-Kakamigahara Air and Space Museum
Kakamigahara has been Japan's aircraft town since 1917, when the army put its airfield here, and Kawasaki has built aero…
Mino Udatsu Townscape
An udatsu is a fireproof wall built up above the roofline between neighbouring houses. They were expensive, so having on…
Basho Memorial Museum Ogaki
Ogaki is where Oku no Hosomichi ends. Basho arrived here in 1689 after around 2,400 kilometres and five months on the ro…
Site of Reversible Destiny Yoro
Arakawa Shusaku and Madeline Gins spent their careers arguing that architecture had made human beings too comfortable an…
Gifu Sekigahara Battlefield Memorial Museum
On 21 October 1600, around 160,000 men fought in this basin in a single day and the outcome decided who would rule Japan…
Enakyo Gorge Cruise
Enakyo is the reservoir of the Oi dam, completed in 1924 as the first large concrete dam in Japan, which flooded a stret…
Iwamura Castle Ruins
Iwamura stands at 717 metres, the highest domain castle in Japan, with 180 metres of vertical between the town and the k…
Monet's Pond
A small unnamed pond beside Nemichi Shrine in the Itadori valley, fed by spring water clear enough that the koi appear t…
Tokuyama Dam
Tokuyama holds 660 million cubic metres of water, the largest reservoir capacity of any dam in Japan — roughly twice the…
Kegonji
Kegonji is the thirty-third and final temple of the Saikoku pilgrimage, the oldest pilgrimage route in Japan, and it is…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.