Every Place in the Catalogue
1,610 spots
Ohirasan Shrine
Little knownThe approach to Ohirasan Shrine is about a thousand stone steps up the side of Mt. Ohira, and for two weeks in June it i…
Ashikaga Gakko
Little knownAshikaga Gakko is generally described as the oldest school in Japan. Its exact founding date is disputed — candidates ra…
Oya-ji Temple
Little knownOya stone is the soft volcanic tuff that Utsunomiya is built out of, and Oya-ji is where it was first carved. The temple…
Wakayama Farm Bamboo Grove
Little knownEverybody photographs the bamboo at Arashiyama in Kyoto, shoulder to shoulder on a path a few metres wide. The largest b…
Shizumine Furusato Park
Little knownAlmost every cherry blossom site in Japan is somei-yoshino, the pale single-flowered clone that blooms and drops within…
Yokaren Peace Memorial Museum
Little knownThe Yokaren was the Imperial Navy's preparatory flight training programme, and from 1939 the main training base was at T…
Howaen
Little knownHowaen began as the garden of a temple, was expanded by Tokugawa Mitsukuni in the seventeenth century, and is now a smal…
Hirakata Port Anko Nabe
Little knownMonkfish is ugly, gelatinous and almost entirely edible — the Japanese phrase is that seven parts of it can be eaten, in…
Hitachi Izumo Taisha
Little knownIn 1992 the great shrine of Izumo in Shimane divided its deity and enshrined it here, on a hillside beside Route 50 in K…
Shunpu Manriso
Little knownKitaoji Rosanjin was a calligrapher, a potter, a restaurateur and by most accounts extremely difficult to be around, and…
Amabiki Kannon
Little knownAmabikisan Rakuhoji is a hillside temple founded, by its own account, in 587, and for centuries it has been the place pe…
Ikisu Shrine
Little knownIkisu is the third and least visited of the Toogoku Sanja, the three shrines of the east that Kashima and Katori complet…
Kashima Jingu
Little knownKashima Jingu enshrines Takemikazuchi, the thunder and sword deity who in the myths subdues the land and, in later belie…
Nakaminato Fish Market
Little knownNakaminato is a working fishing port on the Ibaraki coast and the market beside it is where the boats' catch is sold dir…
Seizanso
Little knownTokugawa Mitsukuni is one of the most recognisable figures in Japan — as Mito Komon, the disguised elderly lord of a lon…
Hananuki Gorge
Little knownHananuki is a narrow river valley in the hills behind Takahagi, and the thing everyone comes for is a sixty-metre footbr…
Ryujin Suspension Bridge
Little knownThe Ryujin bridge is a pedestrian span 375 metres long, strung 100 metres above a dammed gorge in the hills of Hitachiot…
Izura Rokkakudo
Little knownOkakura Tenshin wrote The Book of Tea, ran the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, curated Asian art in Boston, and argued that A…
Tsukimachi Falls
Little knownTsukimachi is 17 metres high and 12 metres wide and comes down in three separate strands, and its local name is the fall…
Oiwa Shrine
Little knownMt. Oiwa is described in local record as the oldest sacred mountain in the old province of Hitachi, and the shrine at it…
Illustration — not a photographIchihara Lakeside Museum
Little knownA 1990s municipal sculpture museum on the shore of a reservoir in inland Chiba was, by the early 2010s, the kind of plac…
Namero and Sanga-yaki
Little knownNamero is a fisherman's dish and the method explains the name. Horse mackerel or sardine, filleted on a moving boat, cho…
Shiramazu Flower Fields
Little knownThe southern tip of the Boso peninsula is warm enough that flowers grow outdoors through the winter, and the coast road…
Futtsu Cape Observation Tower
Little knownFuttsu is a sand spit that runs five kilometres out into Tokyo Bay, narrowing to almost nothing, and at the very end of…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.