Enable JavaScript to use the Trip Finder, or browse all guides below.
-
Enoshima is a small island at the end of a sandbar that juts seaward from the Shonan beach, linked to the mainland by a causeway bridge, and it lies within Fujisawa city in Kanagawa Prefecture.
-
Guidebooks describe this green corner of western Tokyo as a calm, unhurried setting well suited to a slow day trip.
-
Kururi is a historic castle town in Kimitsu City, Chiba Prefecture, set in the inland hills of the Boso Peninsula. Its surroundings of low hills, rice paddies, and secondary woodland give the area a distinctly rural atmosphere. Through the Edo period Kururi served as the seat of the Kururi domain, and the old castle-town street plan is still faintly legible in the layout of the town below the castle hill. For all that history, Kururi is said to draw far fewer visitors than the busier corners of Chiba, its scenery quiet farmland rather than tourist country.
-
Mount Hodo (宝登山) is an independent peak that rises in Nagatoro Town, in the Chichibu district of Saitama Prefecture, and it stands out as one of the few standalone summits in the wider Chichibu range.
-
Guidebooks describe Mount Mitake as a long-established hub of Okutama tourism that has drawn families and hikers from the Tokyo area in every season rather than an undiscovered corner. For a traveler who values calm, its appeal is said to lie less in solitude than in the hush of a long-inhabited sacred settlement near the summit.
-
Mount Tsukuba rises in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, as twin peaks named Nantaisan and Nyotaisan. It is counted among Japan's Hundred Famous Mountains. The mountain is said to be nicknamed the Purple Peak (紫峰), its forested slopes shifting in hue between morning and evening.
-
Nagatoro is a scenic gorge town in the northern part of the Chichibu Basin, in Saitama prefecture.
-
Naritasan Shinshoji seemed, even in older descriptions, a place shaped for unhurried and reflective visits rather than for haste. For a traveler who prefers calm, Naritasan is said to suit an unhurried and attentive pace.
-
Guidebooks describe Nokogiriyama and its temple, Nihonji, as organized into roughly five visitor zones — the summit, the Rakan stone-figure path, the mid-slope buildings, the Great Buddha plaza, and the historic Omotesando entrance approach — which visitors can combine to suit the time available.
-
Guidebooks describe Okutama's defining quality as an atmosphere of deep mountain seclusion and hushed valley scenery, an experience they liken to the neighbouring Okuchichibu highlands. According to the 1961 guidebook, the Okutama mountain region in western Tokyo centres on the Tama River watershed and takes in the Nippara, Kosuge, and Akigawa river basins in the country west of Ome and Itsukaichi. According to the 1961 guidebook, the Okutama area was taken into Chichibu-Tama National Park—Japan's sixteenth national park—on 10 July 1950. The Okutama massif, according to the 1961 guidebook, is built entirely of eroded sedimentary rock and holds no volcanic formations, an unusual geological character for a mountain area of this scale in Japan.
-
Guidebooks describe several calm outings within easy reach of central Tokyo, and this guide sets two of them side by side for travelers who prefer a slower kind of day.
-
Yoro Valley seemed like a destination suited to travelers who value calm surroundings and an unhurried pace.