Every Place in the Catalogue
1,610 spots
Kibitsu Shrine
Locally knownKibitsu Shrine enshrines Kibitsuhiko-no-Mikoto, the prince whose campaign against a local strongman named Ura is general…
Shizutani School
Locally knownIkeda Mitsumasa, lord of Okayama, founded this school in 1670 in a valley deliberately chosen for its quiet, and made it…
Hiroshima Tsukemen
Locally knownHiroshima tsukemen has almost nothing in common with the thick-broth dipping noodles served elsewhere in Japan. The nood…
Shirunashi Tantanmen
Locally knownSoupless dandan noodles are a Hiroshima invention of 2001. The owner of a small shop called Kisaku had eaten the dish in…
Myoo-in
Locally knownMyoo-in has two National Treasures on one small hillside: a main hall rebuilt at the end of the Kamakura period and a fi…
Mitarai
Locally knownBefore engines, ships waited for the tide. Mitarai sits on Osakishimojima where the currents are gentler than on the sur…
Takehara Preservation District
Locally knownTakehara made its money from salt and sake. The Seto Inland Sea coast here was laid out as evaporation flats in the seve…
Myogi Shrine
Locally knownMt. Myogi is one of the strangest-looking mountains in Japan — a wall of eroded volcanic spires and needles rising abrup…
Fujido Cave
Locally knownUeno is the least populated municipality in Gunma, deep in the mountains on the Saitama border, and Fujido is the reason…
Kiryu Shinmachi Historic District
Locally knownKiryu made silk cloth for a thousand years and industrialised early, and the town still shows it. Honcho 1-chome and 2-c…
Chatsubomigoke Park
Locally knownAt the far western edge of Nakanojo, in a basin formed by eruptions of Kusatsu-Shirane, warm acidic springs seep out of…
Ebiya Chozo
Locally knownNikko and Kyoto both make the skin that forms on heated soy milk, and they write it differently on purpose. Kyoto writes…
Nasu Kokuzohi
Locally knownIn the year 700, the sons of Nasu no Atai Idé raised an inscribed stone to their late father, who had governed the provi…
Kirifuri Falls
Locally knownKirifuri means falling mist, and the name is descriptive: the water drops in two stages, 25 metres and then 26, breaking…
Hacchonoyu
Locally knownThere are four inns in the Okukinu hot spring group, at the head of the Kinugawa valley inside Nikko National Park, and…
Ryuokyo Gorge
Locally knownAround twenty-two million years ago this was seabed, and undersea volcanism laid down the rock that the Kinugawa has sin…
Banna-ji Temple
Locally knownBanna-ji was built in 1196 by Ashikaga Yoshikane as the clan temple of the family that would go on to hold the shogunate…
Yunishigawa Onsen
Locally knownThe story Yunishigawa tells about itself is that survivors of the Taira clan, beaten at Dan-no-ura in 1185, fled into th…
Kanmangafuchi Abyss
Locally knownA twenty-minute walk from the Toshogu crowds, on the far bank of the Daiya River, a lava gorge runs between the trees an…
Illustration — not a photographHirasawa Kanga Ruins
Locally knownIn the eighth century the province of Hitachi was administered through district offices, and the one for Tsukuba distric…
Ushiku Chateau
Locally knownKamiya Denbei made his money on Denki Bran, the brandy-based liqueur still served at his bar in Asakusa, and in 1903 he…
Makabe Historic District
Locally knownMakabe began as the castle town of the medieval Makabe clan and grew into a market town under the Tokugawa, and the stre…
Tainoura
Locally knownSea bream are deep-water fish that do not normally school at the surface. In the bay at Kominato they do, in numbers, an…
Byobugaura
Locally knownTen kilometres of sea cliff, forty to fifty metres high, running south-west from Choshi along the Pacific with nothing i…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.