Japan’s 10 Hidden Gems to Visit in 2025
Japan has so much nature and cultural sites beyond the main cities. And if you're watching this video, that's awesome because just like us, you want to explore these. If you new here, I'm Roy and this is Aimee and we've been in Japan for about five years now. And now we live in this beautiful part of the countryside.
From our countless trips all over Japan we’ve handcrafted this list of our top ten hidden gems. Most of these places are around the central Japan area. But our hope is, is even if it's your first visit to Japan, you can find your way off the main tourist trail.
Starting at number ten we have Chichibu. We’ll be counting down from 10 to 1, one being our absolute favourite place in all of Japan. And believe it or not, it's not what you saw on the thumbnail. But back to Chichibu.
Chichibu is a countryside town, about 90 minutes on a direct train from Tokyo. And it is just the perfect place to just bust out of the cities and really begin to experience the countryside of Japan and the mountains and all the beautiful nature there is. Such a great thing about Chichibu is that there's just already so many unique activities that you can do in this area. For example, there's this ancient pilgrimage hike that you can do where you go on this ancient trail, you go between all these shrines. It's just rich with culture. There's awesome hikes all through the national park in the area.
There's a town next to it called Nagatoro, where you can actually hop on a boat and go down the river and you can get tours by Japanese people doing this cruise. If you're into seasonal things. In spring, there's a flower festival where this entire hill just lights up in this bright pink flower - It's so awesome. And if you’re cool like me - and you watch a lot of anime, this place is actually so cool because there was this anime, this cult classic called Anohana and it is set in this town. And what's so cool is that Chichbu has actually kind of just taken it and ran with it.
The city has created routes where you can go around and visit all the different places that were featured in the anime. They've even done things where they’ve painted an entire train with like a mural of like the characters and stuff like that. It's so cool. You really just feel like you're suddenly in the land of anime because they’ve just kind of merged all together with real life.
Love it. And as Roy said earlier, there is direct transport from Tokyo, so I really love Chichibu for that reason. But in terms of really detailed transport info, we're not going to go into it in this video here, but we have created a map with all of these ten different hidden gems pinned and we've got really thorough transport info there for you guys. So that map is going to be on our Patreon. You can access it for free and the link to the Patreon is in the video description.
So that takes us on to number nine on our list, which is Teradomari Street Market. This entry on the list is a fish market. There are a lot of fish markets around Japan and they are quite popular. So you've got Tsukiji in Tokyo or you've got Omicho in Kanazawa and these ones are getting quite crowded. And honestly, the prices are not as great anymore, I would say.
So it is quite nice if you can get off that beaten path a little bit and go to one or two that are not in the main areas. So this one is located in Niigata prefecture along the western coast of Japan and we visited there earlier this year and just really love the local feel to it, how it was reasonably priced. And there are so many like fried seafood snacks. There's crab soup, there’s fresh seafood, of course, that you can pick up - so good, right? That you can pick up and eat there on the spot. Niigata itself is about 2 to 3 hours from Tokyo by Shinkansen, so you can access it via public transport.
But if you really want to do a bit more of a deep dive into the area, it is probably better to get a car and then you can do things like there's really beautiful rice fields and countryside around that area. There's a town over called Yuzawa, which is very good in winter time for skiing and snowboarding, and it does have a lot of really cool art installations that they have started to put throughout the countryside to encourage tourism. As I said, we did travel to this area a little bit earlier this year.
So if you'd like some inspiration for what you can do yourself around the area then there will be a card on screen somewhere around here and you can click on that and see the video. Number eight on the list is the area of Minakami. Just one hour on the Shinkansen from Tokyo. Minakami I like to think is like an outdoor adventurers paradise. There's this company there called Canyons Japan, and they take you on guided tours doing canyoning and rafting. So if you feel like just throwing yourself off a waterfall into a ravine, you can do that.
Or if that's a bit too much like high action for you, you can just do guided tours doing rafting, which is such a good way to just like mellow out and just like take in all the beautiful mountains and nature and scenery and all that. It might be a little bit high action with the rapids, but they are some of the best rapids in Japan, apparently. But if that's all still too much, you can also just chill out and do some hiking. There's this mountain called Mount Tanigawa.
It's a five hour return trip. It offers like incredible views, I like to think. And then the area of Minakami, believe it or not, it just keeps on giving. It's also an onsen town, right? So if you have a car, some of these places are a bit difficult to get to, but you can get up into the mountains where there's these amazing onsen resorts and they just leave me speechless, to be completely honest. They can just give you that classic “This is Japan” kind of experience.
Moving on from action packed adventure to cultural and historical sites. We have Kayabuki No Sato. This entry on the list is a thatched roof house village. There are quite a few of these across the country of Japan, and particularly the one that's most popular is called Shirakawago. It's not, you know, crazy busy like Tokyo or Kyoto. But these days, you know, there are quite a lot of tourists.
There's busloads that come in. So if you're looking for, I guess, an off the beaten path experience, perhaps Shirakawago doesn't quite provide that anymore, although it is, you know, still very beautiful. So Kayabuki No Sato are located in northern Kyoto, offers a little bit more of a peaceful experience. If you want to see one of these traditional villages. In this village in particular, a lot of people still actually live in the houses. So it kind of feels a bit more like a peaceful look into the countryside of Japan.
Because of that, there aren't as many restaurants and cafes and amenities for tourists as Shirakawago, but if you are again, looking for this really peaceful experience, I think this one is a really good pick for you. And of course, there are some places, some of the actual houses that you can stay in overnight, which I think would make a really a really great experience. Yeah I want to do that one day.
Yeah, me too! As I said earlier, this one is located in northern Kyoto. So you can reach it by public transport in about an hour or two from Kyoto City itself. But it's probably going to come up with a lot of these listings, if you would like to see even more of the area, then it could be a good option to get a car and northern Kyoto in particular has a lot of really scenic spots. There are other villages like Ine village.
There is scenic spots like Amanohashidate. So I would really recommend those as well. And we've got video where we explore them so again, we'll leave a card somewhere and you can check that out if you'd like to see this area. Number six on the list is Kurobe Gorge. On the west coast of Japan this gorge cuts into the northern Alps and it's one of the deepest gorges in all of Japan. One of the main things to do in this area is ride a sightseeing train.
You hop on and you ride through the steep sides of the valleys. You take in these amazing views like the water is just so blue. And in autumn it's like one of the best places to see autumn colors in all of Japan. It's just absolutely incredible. Add an asterix, that that's our claim - not someone else's claim.
It's pretty amazing. Trust me. At this current point in time, you can't go to the final stop of the sightseeing train because at the start of this year, 2024, Noto peninsula earthquake, there's some damages and you can’t hop off. But that shouldn't be too much of a killer for this place, because there's other stops that you can do along the way. You can hop off the train and then you can start these like hikes through the area, through the steep valleys of the gorge, which is pretty incredible.
And you can go and stay at some rustic onsen inns, They've got their own onsens or you can go hiking, you can find your own wild onsens out there, apparently. I think it's a really cool place to go. And in regards to the damages from the earthquake at the time of filming this video, those are in effect, but hopefully they will get those fixed perhaps down the line. Coming in at number five is Yamagata.
Yamagata is both a prefecture in northern Japan and there is also Yamagata City inside that prefecture. And it's around 2 to 3 hours by the Shinkansen from Tokyo. The reason why this one makes it onto the list is that it's both a really nice, peaceful city. It's still got things going on and it serves as a really good base for so much nature, onsen and really beautiful things around the area. So to the northeast of the city, you have Yamadera temple.
Yamadera temple, it's got like a thousand steps that you need to climb up to the top and then you get really beautiful views over the valley. There's also just south of that Zao onsen. This is both an onsen town, as the name suggests, and in winter time it's also a ski resort. And it's a really nice one because on the top of the mountain there's this thing called snow monsters. What is snow monsters you might ask. In Japan, there's this phenomenon in some places where when there are really cold days and strong winds, the trees get covered in snow and make it look like snow monsters.
So you can see those at Zao Onsen, there's illuminations so you don't even have to really like snow sports in of itself. And then a bit further afield on the western side of Yamagata City, you have the Dewasanzan. These ones are a bit more accessible if you do have a car. And what they are are three sacred mountains.
The mountains range in difficulty if you would like to hike up to the top of them so Mt Gassan, for example, is a little bit more difficult. While Mount Haguro is really quite accessible in all seasons, it probably takes around 2 to 3 hours return and Haguro in particular, you start down in the forest with these red bridges, pagodas, really tall cedar trees, and then you walk up a whole bunch of stairs to the top where there is a shrine and we've only been in winter, but it was just so magical. It was like a Ghibli dream.
It was so amazing. Yeah! Really recommend that one. And Yamagata overall. Moving on to number four on the list, we have Hakuba. I am talking about this one, not Roy because it is about hiking.
I see a mountain in the distance and I say, “Wonder what that mountain’s called? Can I climb to the top? What does it look like from the top?” I love it. I love it. I love it. So Hakuba is an area. It's a town that is right next to the Japanese northern Alps. And it's particularly popular in wintertime.
It is fairly well known, I would say, at that time, because it is, as I said, right next to the Alps and it has many, many ski resorts in the one valley. And Australians like us in particular, really enjoy going to this area for skiing and snowboarding. However, I wanted to put it in here on this list for summer and autumn time, because it has such great hiking to do. Being next to the Alps, there are really big, long multi-day hikes that can be done along the top of the peaks. To be fair, we haven't done those, it's on the bucket list. I really, really want to do them.
Or there are some day hikes as well that can be done in around 3 hours return and they still allow you to see the beautiful, beautiful Alps, but you don't have to exert yourself as much. And they’re particularly night in autumn, around the first couple of weeks of October, when they just burst to life with all of the autumn colours. Now, I will say that in the footage you're seeing on screen now, it does look pretty crowded. And the reason for that is that hiking and hiking in the Alps is very popular with domestic tourists, with Japanese people.
So if you would like a quieter experience, then I would recommend going on a weekday, not on a weekend, and just enjoying these beautiful views. Getting down to the spicy end of things Number three on the list is Izu. Izu is a peninsula located 2 hours south of Tokyo. And I like to think it's this awesome place where you can see the sea suddenly just jut up into these big cliffs and like making these fantastic coastal views, some of the best in central Japan, I like to think.
The other big drawcard for the area is that you can see Mt. Fuji from so many different places within Izu peninsula like the base of Mount Fuji and all the kind of sightseeing areas can get pretty busy. Right? But believe it or not, you can just go to this other place not so close to Fuji, and you get these spectacular views. Alongside that it's a great place for scenic walks. You can do coastal walks or you can go inland and you can do walks next to waterfalls and stuff like that.
And on top of that, because it's next to the coast, it's a great opportunity to stay in a Japanese inn and you can get served up some of the freshest seafood you could ever have in Japan. And sit in an onsen and look out at the beautiful ocean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing beats that to be honest. One quick note about traveling this area is that the east coast is quite accessible by public transport, but the West Coast, much like a lot of these places we're talking about today, is much easier reached in a car.
Coming in at second is Togakushi Shrine. This is located more to the western side of Japan, right, in a national park, and it's not too far from Nagano city. As the name suggests this is a shrine and it's also a powerspot. And it consists of the lower shrine, the middle shrine and the upper shrine. And I would say the upper shrine is probably what most people might be familiar with if they've seen a photo.
It is the photo on the thumbnail of this video. I mean, depending on the season, it takes around one hour to go from the Tori gate there at the upper shrine, all the way to the shrine near the mountain and back again. And, you know, it doesn't matter what season it is.
It's so beautiful. You've got these really tall trees that line the path. In summer it can be very atmospheric with all of the lush green.
And then in winter, well, it's just a magical winter paradise. Really it doesn't matter what season you go in, it's quite beautiful. As I just mentioned, it's an hour or so from Nagano City and the area around Nagano city could be a really good place to explore and base yourself in the city because you've got Togakushi more to the west side of the city. But then on the eastern side, you have got the snow monkey park, and around that is also a couple of onsen towns and then in winter, if you're visiting, there are really quite a lot of snow all around that area.
So it's a great spot to just be for a couple of days I think. And coming in at number one is Gujo Hachiman, which is a countryside town located in Gifu, and it has just got everything. Oh my God, it is my favorite, our favorite spot in all of Japan.
First of all, it's got this amazing river that runs through the town, which the water is so clear, so blue. It's gorgeous to the eyes. And then the houses that line the river just look so picturesque. I love it. I feel like I'm in a Ghibli fantasy.
It's amazing. And then the things you can do in the town is amazing, right? You probably wouldn't know this, but those food replicas, the plastic ones that you see at the front of restaurants, pretty much all of the ones in Japan are made there. It's like the leading distributor and creator of those. So there’s kind of workshops that you can do where you kind of make those, I think that's really cool. And then on to the biggest thing in the town in terms of like hands on experience is the Gujo Hachiman Odori or dance festival.
This festival is limited to summertime, but it kind of runs throughout the entire summer time. And basically it hits dusk and everyone comes out in their kind of like traditional Japanese outfits. And then they run through these kind of like set dances that everyone in the town seems to just magically know. It's got the best energy, honestly. And then they're running these food stalls as well.
It's almost like a little Japanese festival, right? For the first time when we stumbled across this festival, we kind of just jumped in and we kinda were dancing. We had no idea what the hell we were doing. It's a little bit embarrassing. No but it was still fun, though. It's still fun.
Everyone was like pushing us in, like “In you go! Go into the line!”. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is such a good energy.
And then finally, so we went back another year and then we actually did the full thing. We kind of like bought some Geta like the Japanese sandals. We bought all of that like Yukata festival gear and we wore it and it's just, it's just magical.
It's the best vibes ever. And that time we went with my parents and it was on a ten day road trip around central Japan and they said that was their favourite spot and their favourite experience. And we actually there are videos online where you can watch the dances. And so we were practicing for like a week leading up in like our different Air BnB’s and we were practicing the dances and stuff.
But I think regardless if you practice and wear the traditional clothes or you don't, you just rock up. It's just so the energy is just electric. It's so good. Yeah, and it honestly doesn't even stop there for Gujo.
They've even got a castle sitting on top of one of the nearby peaks of the like, the hills or the mountains. And it just makes this A) great spot to go check out the history of the area, but B) also just this beautiful vista where you can see everything. You see the rivers I was talking about before. And speaking of rivers, similar to a lot of other small towns in Gifu Prefecture, this one has koi swimming in not necessarily the gutters, but these little streams running along the paths. The reason why there's these streams is because the town can be quite prone to fire. So they've got all these streams and just koi swimming along.
It's really beautiful. Another thing that's quite refreshing, almost in a literal sense, is how often people during like the sweltering hot summers get the swimmers on. They go down to the river and they just like jump off bridges and like, that's a bit dangerous.
But even like rocks on the side into the river, honestly, it looks like the best time ever. I was so sad both times when we went and I didn't have my swimmers with me. Next time we go, I'm definitely going to bring my swimmers and jumping off the rocks with the locals as well. And the really nice thing about Gujo and most of the places on this list today is that it had surprisingly quite good English support.
When we went to the Tourist Information Center, they had this book that we got and it was just so full of such great English information on the area. So it does really feel like they're quite prepared to have more international tourists come. They just need to know about it. So that is our top ten hidden gems in Japan. If you want to see more about our life out here in the Japanese countryside or how we travel around Japan, please consider subscribing.
And thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to check out the link in the video description. If you'd like the whole map on these ten places and we'll see you in the next video. Bye bye.
2025-01-23 05:18
