Hidden Gems Across Japan
1,610 spots
Kesennuma Earthquake Memorial Museum
Kesennuma Koyo High School stood on the shore at Hashikami. On 11 March 2011 a tsunami of more than thirteen metres went…
Michinoku Ajisai-en
A forestry family in the hills outside Ichinoseki planted hydrangeas among their cedar plantation, and kept planting. Th…
Tono Furusato Village
Tono is where Yanagita Kunio collected the folk tales that became Tono Monogatari, and this open-air site is where the b…
Miyazawa Kenji Memorial Museum
Miyazawa Kenji wrote Night on the Galactic Railroad and a body of poetry and children's stories that has never gone out…
Osawa Onsen
Osawa is a toji inn — a hot spring where people came to stay for weeks and cook for themselves, not for a night of kaise…
Zaimokucho Yoichi
Every Saturday afternoon from early April to late November, four hundred metres of Zaimokucho — a shopping street in cen…
Iwate Bank Red Brick Building
Tatsuno Kingo designed Tokyo Station, and this is the only building of his left standing in the Tohoku region. It was co…
Fukuda Pan
Fukuda Pan has been making koppepan — a soft split bread roll — since 1948, originally supplying school lunches, and it…
Pairon
Jajamen is one of the three noodle dishes Morioka is known for and it is the strangest. Flat warm noodles arrive with a…
Mamebu
Mamebu is a dumpling of wheat dough wrapped around walnut and black sugar, boiled and served in a clear soy-based broth…
Hiraniwa Highland
Hiraniwa sits at eight hundred metres on the shoulder of Mt. Hiraniwa, on the boundary between Kuji and Kuzumaki, and it…
Kuji Amber Museum
Kuji amber is around 85 million years old, from the Cretaceous, which makes it substantially older than Baltic amber and…
Hashino Iron Mining Site
In 1858 Oshima Takato, working from a Dutch textbook, built a Western-style blast furnace here and produced Japan's firs…
Goishi Coast
The Goishi coast runs about six kilometres around the end of the Massaki peninsula and is named for the beach of flat bl…
Kitayamazaki
Kitayamazaki is eight kilometres of cliff on the Sanriku coast, two hundred metres straight down to the water, and it is…
Goshono Jomon Site
Goshono was a large village of the middle Jomon period, occupied from roughly 5,000 to 4,200 years ago, and in July 2021…
Tekiseisha
About seventy per cent of Japan's domestically produced lacquer comes from Joboji in Ninohe, tapped by hand from trees i…
Hachimantai Aspite Line
The Aspite Line runs twenty-seven kilometres across the Hachimantai massif from Gozaisho in Iwate to Toroko Onsen in Aki…
Toshichi Onsen
Toshichi sits at 1,400 metres on the flank of Hachimantai, the highest hot spring in the Tohoku region, and the water co…
Taro Kanko Hotel
Taro built the largest tsunami sea wall in Japan — two and a half kilometres of concrete, ten metres high, in an X acros…
Iwate Tsunami Memorial Museum
The Sanriku coast has been hit by major tsunami repeatedly — 1896, 1933, 1960, 2011 — and this museum, opened in Septemb…
Saruka Shrine
Saruka is an old shrine on the Tsugaru plain, associated with healing of the eyes and with agriculture, and it sits at t…
Towada Art Center
Towada is a small city on the Aomori plain laid out on a grid by the Meiji government, and in 2008 it did something unus…
Aji no Sapporo Onishi
Miso curry milk ramen is exactly what it says: a miso base, curry powder, milk, and a pat of butter on top, with bean sp…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.