This spring, I ventured off to Kagawa prefecture for more new discoveries. I have been to Kagawa in the past twice, in winter and summer. This time around I am back to witness this smallest prefecture of Japan dressed in all spring colors.
Read my previous articles on Kagawa here!
Continue readingThings have been slowly looking better for Japan and I have spent the first two months of the year busy exploring new places around Japan – virtually or not. The allure of Japan is simply endless. Today, I will be introducing a new itinerary to explore the Central Japan region.
We will be looking at 4 main prefectures: Gifu, Toyama, Ishikawa and Fukui, with Nagoya city as the base for this travel itinerary. The Central Japan Region is a year-round destination that offers an abundance of nature and delicious food every season. My favorite is still winter, though, given the inland of Central Japan gets plenty of snowfall in the colder months, making it a magical wonderland especially for tropical creatures like me!
This is a special post dedicated to Hamamatsu City of Shizuoka prefecture, and also the final post of my Tokai journey. This most populated city of Shizuoka prefecture may be unbeknownst to many travelers who are too eager to make a beeline for the magnificent Mt Fuji, but if you scratch the surface just a little deeper, you will find Hamamatsu itself full of allures with plenty to offer, from the niche legacy for avid musicians to fun resorts for the entire family of all ages. Think avant garde vocaloid keyboard, fresh mandarin-orange-picking, and delicious eels.
Nagoya has proved itself a charming city that has won a place in my heart, as you have read in my previous article. To think that Nagoya is just one of the many allures Aichi prefecture has to offer, I truly wonder how many lives I will need to eventually see enough of Japan till I tire… (which is never).
I was ashamed how little I know of Aichi before the trip, given how this region holds some of the most significant historic events during the Warring Period in Japan, and is the birth place of the three greatest war heroes ever known in Japan – Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. People in Aichi are not shy to proudly boasts about their home prefecture, and they rightly should!
Today, we are exploring the third largest city of Japan, Nagoya. Nagoya is so widely known worldwide that many has mistaken it as a prefecture itself, just like Tokyo and Osaka. Nagoya is but a city of Aichi Prefecture, but this charming city has so many allures in itself that I am dedicating an exclusive post to it.
We will be looking at other attractions in other regions of Aichi prefecture in a separate post later on.
First of all, if I must be completely honest, Nagoya was never on my list of sightseeing priorities given how much of urban vibe I already get in Tokyo daily. Nagoya to me, was but a station seen out of the windows of Nozomi shinkansen whizzes through from Tokyo to the west of Japan. It never occurred to me to actually spend a couple of days traversing this metropolitan region between the east and west of Japan.
I hope you enjoyed revisiting Mie prefecture virtually with me. And now, we are venturing into the deep mountains of Gifu prefecture.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are high that you’ve already heard of the hamlet known as Shirakawago located in Gifu prefecture. Outside of this now well known attraction of though, overseas visitors to Japan often don’t know much else about Gifu (or much else of Central Japan for that matter). Given that there’s a huge array of allures strewn about the prefecture, this is a real shame. From the ever-charming Hida Takayama area to the rustic hot spring town of Gero Onsen, you’re spoiled for choice in Gifu.
I didn’t expect to be back to Mie and writing about Mie again so soon! (To think that my very post below is exactly Mie… either the prefecture loves me too much or I am obsessed with it, or both, at this rate I’d like to think it’s deep mutual affection.)
Although many of the destinations I feature in this post are repeated attractions I have visited several times in Mie prefecture before, it is always a pleasure to be back again, meeting the same people at a different time, feeling a different vibe in a different season, experiencing a brand new journey altogether. It’s something I don’t mind doing over and over again.
This was the day I ate more fish than I ever did in my entire life.
So… the first time I went finishing was in Nagasaki last year. Junya, although being really thoughtful for the fishes’ feelings, really enjoyed it. He wanted to do it again so we went for a little weekend trip at Atami, Shizuoka prefecture, which we thought was a perfect getaway – sunshine, beaches, sea and onsen. And lots of fish.
If you haven’t already known, Atami is probably one of the most popular vacation spots for Tokyoites to escape the city a little, being in close proximity to the metropolis and boasting lots of hot spring resorts close by the beach.
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