Saitama

The preserved street half an hour from central Tokyo is not a survival of the wooden townscape that stood there before. A fire late in the nineteenth century took that, and what the merchants put up in its place were thick clay-walled storehouses built to be fireproof — heavy, dark, expensive buildings that then proved too solid and too costly to knock down when fashions changed.

So the townscape people photograph is a product of a disaster and of inertia, which is a more interesting story than preservation. Walk the length of it and then turn off into the side lanes, where the bell tower and the confectioners' alley are, because the main street is the busiest part and not the best. Come on a weekday morning; by the middle of a weekend afternoon the pavement is the constraint on everything.

This is the easiest prefecture in the country to reach without a car. Tobu, Seibu and JR all run from central Tokyo: Kawagoe is around 30 minutes from Ikebukuro, and Seibu's Laview limited express reaches Seibu-Chichibu in about 80 minutes. The Chichibu Railway then continues to Nagatoro and Mitsumineguchi, and a bus climbs from there to Mitsumine Shrine. Omiya is a shinkansen stop and a junction for six lines. Kawagoe and Chichibu town are both walkable once you arrive. Only the deeper Okuchichibu valleys and the Mitsumine back roads justify driving, and they are narrow.

Half a day for Kawagoe, a full day if you add Chichibu, and that is genuinely the prefecture. Saitama's problem and its opportunity are the same thing: it is where Tokyo's suburbs end, so almost everything in it is a day trip from a city most visitors are already staying in.

Kawagoe is about thirty to fifty minutes from central Tokyo depending on the line, and the preserved merchant street, the bell tower and the candy alley take three or four hours at a walk. Chichibu is the other direction and further — around ninety minutes from Ikebukuro on the express — into a valley of shrines, a night festival in December and some genuinely good walking.

Two days is Kawagoe plus Chichibu with a night in the valley, which is a better trip than doing both as separate day trips from Tokyo. Nagatoro's river boats sit on the same line as Chichibu and slot into that second day.

Weekends in Kawagoe, if you have any choice. The old street is narrow, it is the closest thing to a historic townscape within an hour of Tokyo, and on a Saturday afternoon it is shoulder to shoulder. A weekday morning is a different and much better place.

Early December has the opposite problem for a good reason: the Chichibu night festival is one of the major float festivals in the country and the town, which is small, is overwhelmed for it. Go if that is what you came for and book far ahead; avoid if it is not. Midsummer is simply hot and shadeless in Kawagoe, where the appeal is walking a street of dark wooden warehouses.

The eastern half of the prefecture is landlocked, low-lying and shut off from any sea breeze, and it regularly returns some of the highest temperatures recorded anywhere in the country. Combine that with a main attraction that consists of walking a street of dark-walled buildings with almost no shade, and midsummer becomes the one season here that genuinely does not work.

The good news is that the prefecture contains its own answer. The mountains in the west sit several hundred metres higher, the valley air is markedly cooler, and there is river gorge, walking and a shrine on a ridge to fill the day. So in the warm months invert the usual plan: do the merchant town early in the morning or not at all, and spend the rest of the day up the line in the hills. In spring and autumn the order does not matter.

Saitama grows soba wheat in the Chichibu hills and buckwheat noodles are the standard there, often served with kurumi dipping sauce. Kawagoe built its wealth partly on sweet potatoes, and the shops along Kashiya Yokocho sell them roasted, candied and baked into everything from ice cream to beer. Sayama tea is grown in the west of the prefecture and picked from May, with a heavier roast than Uji or Shizuoka. Unagi is a Kawagoe speciality that predates refrigeration, when the town sat a river journey from the Edo fish markets.

Kumagaya and the eastern plain regularly record the highest temperatures in Japan, above 38°C in July and August, and there is no sea breeze to fix it — plan the Chichibu hills for summer instead. Winters are dry, sunny and almost snow-free on the plain, with January highs near 10°C. The shibazakura at Hitsujiyama Park in Chichibu flowers from mid-April into early May. Nagatoro's river boats run from March to November. The Chichibu Night Festival falls on December 2–3 and fills every train out of the valley. Autumn colour in the Chichibu gorges peaks in mid-November.

Trains, comfortably, and this is one of the few prefectures in Japan where hiring a car would be actively worse. The private railways from Ikebukuro and Shinjuku run direct and frequent services to both of the places anyone goes, roads into Chichibu are slow and congested at weekends, and parking in Kawagoe's old quarter is limited by design.

The only case for a car is the far west of the prefecture, up into the mountains beyond Chichibu, where the valleys and small onsen thin out beyond the railway. That is a specialised trip. For everything most visitors want, take the express, and if you are doing Kawagoe consider the discount excursion tickets the private lines sell, which bundle the return with local buses.

A first visit is Kawagoe on a weekday morning, and it is a strong recommendation for anyone whose Tokyo trip needs a break from Tokyo. Warehouse architecture that survived the fires and the war, a wooden bell tower still sounding, a lane of sweet shops, and the whole thing reachable in under an hour without leaving your hotel. Three hours, and back for dinner.

Come back for Chichibu, which is a different proposition entirely: a valley ringed by mountains, a pilgrimage circuit of thirty-four temples that people still walk, river boats at Nagatoro, and shibazakura carpeting a hillside in spring. It is far enough out to need a night to be worth it, and it is the part of Saitama that stops feeling like the edge of the capital and starts feeling like the beginning of the mountains.