Hidden Gems Across Japan
1,610 spots
Kamigare Tea Terraces
Kasuga, in the mountains of western Gifu, has grown tea since the sixteenth century, and at Kamigare the fields climb a…
Eihoji
Eihoji was founded in 1313 by Muso Soseki, the monk who designed the gardens at Tenryuji and Saihoji in Kyoto, and it ho…
Mosaic Tile Museum Tajimi
Kasahara in Tajimi makes more mosaic tile than anywhere else in Japan, and in 2016 the town gave itself a museum for it.…
Naegi Castle Ruins
Naegi was built on a granite outcrop above the Kiso river, and rather than clear the boulders the builders stacked their…
Tekone-zushi
Tekone-zushi is slices of bonito or tuna marinated in soy and mirin, laid over vinegared rice and mixed in by hand. The…
Ise Udon
Ise udon is thick, very soft noodles in a small amount of dark tamari-based sauce, with a little spring onion on top and…
Inabe Plum Grove
Inabe sits under the Suzuka range in the north of Mie and its agricultural park holds around four thousand plum trees of…
Tado Taisha
Tado Taisha sits at the foot of Mt. Tado in the north of Mie, and the tradition here is that a white horse has lived on…
Tsubaki Grand Shrine
Tsubaki Okami Yashiro is the head shrine of the roughly two thousand shrines across Japan dedicated to Sarutahiko-no-Oka…
Matsumoto no Rairaiken
Yokkaichi tonteki is a thick slab of pork, scored into a shape locals call a glove, seared hard and finished in a black…
Yokkaichi Industrial Night View
Yokkaichi's petrochemical complex is the reason the city is known nationally, and for the worst reasons — the air pollut…
Gozaisho Ropeway
The ropeway climbs from Yunoyama Onsen to near the summit of Gozaisho at 1,212 metres, on the Suzuka range that divides…
Kameyama Miso Yakiudon
Route 1 runs through Kameyama and always has, which meant a steady traffic of long-distance lorry drivers and a row of c…
Seki-juku
Seki was the forty-seventh of the fifty-three stations of the Tokaido, and it is the only one of them where the street s…
Takiharanomiya
Takiharanomiya is a betsugu of the Inner Shrine at Ise, forty minutes down the valley from it, and it is called a toonom…
Magose Pass
Magose is the most walked section of the Kumano Kodo Iseji, and the reason is the paving. Two kilometres of stone laid t…
Maruyama Senmaida
About 1,340 rice paddies step up a mountainside in the Maruyama district of Kiwa, in terraces so small that the local sa…
Onigajo
Onigajo is a kilometre and a half of sea cliff on the Kumano coast where volcanic rock laid down about fourteen million…
Akame 48 Waterfalls
Forty-eight is a figure of speech meaning a great many; there are more than twenty named falls along this gorge, strung…
Meharizushi
Meharizushi is a ball of rice wrapped in a pickled takana leaf, and it was the working lunch of the Kumano river basin —…
Negoroji (Iwade)
Negoroji was, at its height in the sixteenth century, a monastic complex of some two thousand buildings with an armed fo…
Ryujin Onsen
Ryujin is counted with Kawanaka in Gunma and Yunokawa in Shimane as one of the three waters of beauty in Japan. The spri…
Taiji Whale Museum
Taiji is a small town on the Kumano coast where organised whaling in Japan began — a system of nets and coordinated boat…
Sanadaan
After Sekigahara in 1600, Sanada Masayuki and his son Nobushige — the man popular history calls Yukimura — were exiled t…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.