Chiba

An enormous number of people arrive in this prefecture and leave without setting foot in it, because the international airport is treated as a place to pass through. A short train ride from the terminal there is a temple town that has been a pilgrimage destination for a thousand years, with a large complex of halls, a hill garden behind it, and a street of eel restaurants leading up to the gate.

If you have five or six hours between flights, this is a genuinely good half day rather than a way to kill time — bags can be left at the station or the terminal, and the trains are frequent. It also makes a much better first or last night than an airport hotel: staying in the temple town and travelling in for an early flight costs less than most of the alternatives and gives you an evening in a place worth being.

One day for the coast, two if you want the Boso peninsula properly. Chiba's shape is the thing to understand: it is a peninsula hanging south of Tokyo, and the interesting parts are down the far end, an hour and a half to two hours from the city on a line that gets slower as it goes.

The workable routes. North: Narita for the temple town, which is twenty minutes from the airport and the best possible use of a long layover. South-west: down the Uchibo coast to Nokogiriyama with its cliff-carved buddha and the ferry across to Kanagawa, a full day. East: the Sotobo surf coast, Katsuura's morning market, and the capes, which really wants a car.

Two days with a night in the south is the version that works. Trying to do the peninsula as a Tokyo day trip means four hours on trains for three hours on the ground.

Narita and Haneda both feed the prefecture, and the Keisei Skyliner reaches Narita in about 40 minutes from Ueno. JR's Sobu and Sotobo and Uchibo lines circle the peninsula, but they slow down considerably south of Kisarazu, and the far end of Boso takes over two hours from Tokyo. The Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line cuts across the bay by bridge and tunnel and turns a long detour into a short bus ride to Kisarazu. Nokogiriyama has a ropeway from Hama-Kanaya, reachable by ferry from Kurihama. For the inland farms and the smaller beaches, take a car.

On the bay side of the peninsula there is a hill that was cut for building stone for a very long time, and the work left sheer faces, stepped terraces and a slot at the summit where you can stand out over a drop. Into and around those faces are carved an enormous seated buddha and a great many small stone figures, each with its own expression, ranged along the paths.

The result is a site unlike anything else within reach of the capital: half industrial archaeology, half religious sculpture, and physically demanding in a way most visitors do not anticipate. There is a ropeway, but the interesting parts are on foot and involve a lot of steps in both directions. Allow at least half a day, wear proper shoes, and consider arriving by the ferry across the bay rather than the long train ride round it.

Trains for the north and the west coast; a car for the east and the interior. The line down the western side of the peninsula is adequate and puts Nokogiriyama and the ferry within reach without driving, and Narita is trivially easy. The Pacific side is where the timetable thins, and the surf beaches, capes and inland valleys are not usefully served.

There is a third option here that matters more than in most prefectures: the ferry from Kurihama in Kanagawa across the bay mouth takes about forty minutes and turns a long loop around Tokyo into a short crossing. If your trip includes both Kanagawa and southern Chiba, that boat is the connection to build around rather than the rail line back through the city.

Midsummer weekends on the beaches, when the whole of Tokyo has the same idea and the coastal roads and car parks are the limiting factor. Also late summer into autumn on the exposed east coast, where typhoons genuinely close roads and ferries — Chiba takes weather off the Pacific that the sheltered side of Japan does not.

Winter is quieter than people assume and the coast is at its clearest, but note that the beach infrastructure is closed and the swimming season here runs only from around early July to late August. The other thing to avoid is treating Narita as a destination in bad weather: the temple grounds are the point and they are outdoors.

Chiba has the mildest winter in the Kanto region, with January highs around 11°C on the southern coast and almost no snow — the Boso flower fields are cut from January through March, when the rest of Honshu has nothing. Summers are hot and humid but sea breezes take the edge off; the swimming season at Kujukuri runs July and August. Typhoons are a genuine consideration from August into September on this coast. Choshi's cliffs get the earliest sunrise on mainland Japan at New Year. Spring and autumn are comfortable throughout, and Sawara's float festivals fall in July and October.

Choshi and Noda have brewed soy sauce for centuries — Noda for the Tokyo market, Choshi with sea air — and both run brewery tours. Namero is a fisherman's dish from the Boso coast: horse mackerel chopped on the board with miso and ginger until it holds together. Chiba grows more peanuts than any other prefecture, mostly around Yachimata, harvested in autumn and sold boiled as well as roasted. Futomaki-matsuri-zushi, thick rolls cut to reveal a picture in the rice, is a farming-village craft from the interior.

A first visit is almost always accidental — a layover at Narita — and the right response is Naritasan, twenty minutes from the terminal. A large working temple complex with a park behind it and a street of eel restaurants leading up to it is a far better three hours than an airport lounge, and it is the single most useful piece of advice in this prefecture.

A deliberate second visit should go south. The Boso peninsula is the part of Kanto that feels furthest from Tokyo despite being an hour and a half from it: a cliff temple with a viewing platform over the bay, fishing ports, surf beaches, a morning market at Katsuura, and the ferry across to Kanagawa to finish. Take a car, take two days, and go in spring or autumn rather than the crowded middle of summer.