Hidden Gems Across Japan
1,610 spots
Imbe Bizen Ware Village
Bizen ware is one of the six ancient kilns of Japan and the only one that has never used glaze. Pots are formed from a h…
Shizutani School
Ikeda Mitsumasa, lord of Okayama, founded this school in 1670 in a valley deliberately chosen for its quiet, and made it…
Hiroshima Tsukemen
Hiroshima tsukemen has almost nothing in common with the thick-broth dipping noodles served elsewhere in Japan. The nood…
Shirunashi Tantanmen
Soupless dandan noodles are a Hiroshima invention of 2001. The owner of a small shop called Kisaku had eaten the dish in…
Myoo-in
Myoo-in has two National Treasures on one small hillside: a main hall rebuilt at the end of the Kamakura period and a fi…
Innoshima Suigunjo
The Murakami were not pirates in the sense the English word implies. They controlled the passages of the central Inland…
Kosanji Temple
Kosanji was built by an industrialist who took Buddhist orders after his mother's death and spent thirty years and a for…
Imose Falls
Imose is two falls in one valley behind Ohgashira Shrine, named as a married pair: Otaki, the husband, drops 30 metres i…
Sera Kogen Flower Farms
The Sera plateau sits at around four hundred metres in the middle of Hiroshima, on soil that suits flowers better than m…
Saijo Sakagura Street
Saijo is named alongside Fushimi in Kyoto and Nada in Hyogo as one of the three great sake districts of Japan, and unlik…
Joge White Wall Street
Joge sat on the Sekishu road between the Sea of Japan side and the Inland Sea, and in the Edo period it was made a shogu…
Taishakukyo Gorge
Taishakukyo runs for about eighteen kilometres through limestone in the north-east of Hiroshima and is one of the two gr…
Josei Falls
Josei drops 126 metres in three stages down a rock face on a tributary of the Sakugi river, and it is the only waterfall…
Miyoshi Mononoke Museum
In 1749 a sixteen-year-old boy in Miyoshi named Inou Heitaro was, according to the account written down afterwards, visi…
Kagura Monzen Toji Mura
Kagura in northern Hiroshima is not a museum piece. Twenty-two amateur troupes in Akitakata alone perform it — masked da…
Fude no Sato Kobo
Kumano makes about eighty per cent of Japan's brushes. It started in the nineteenth century when farmers here, unable to…
Gansu
Gansu is a fish cake that has been breadcrumbed and deep fried. White fish surimi is worked with a lot of onion and chil…
Ondo no Seto
Ondo no Seto is a channel about ninety metres across between the mainland and Kurahashi island, one of the busiest stret…
Alley Karasukojima
Kure was the Imperial Navy's main base and built the Yamato in a dock a short way from here. The submarine pier at Karas…
Mitarai
Before engines, ships waited for the tide. Mitarai sits on Osakishimojima where the currents are gentler than on the sur…
Okunoshima
Okunoshima is a 4.3-kilometre island in the Seto Inland Sea with around seven hundred wild rabbits on it and a very dark…
Takehara Preservation District
Takehara made its money from salt and sake. The Seto Inland Sea coast here was laid out as evaporation flats in the seve…
Myogi Shrine
Mt. Myogi is one of the strangest-looking mountains in Japan — a wall of eroded volcanic spires and needles rising abrup…
Tamaruya
Mizusawa udon is counted among Japan's three great udon alongside Sanuki and Inaniwa, and it developed to feed pilgrims…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.