naoyasaijo– Author –

Akita City is one of Japan’s most unfairly overlooked urban destinations — a place where ancient samurai culture, world-renowned sake, extraordinary local cuisine, and some of the warmest people you’ll ever meet combine into ...

Just three hours north of Tokyo by bullet train, Hachinohe is one of those rare Japanese cities that remains almost entirely off the foreign tourist radar — and that’s exactly what makes it so extraordinary. This gritty, proud fish...

Imagine stepping through a time portal into Edo-period Japan — rows of immaculate thatched-roof buildings lining a stone-paved street, smoke curling from open hearths, the smell of handmade soba drifting through the crisp mountain air. O...

Somewhere in the mountains of Iwate Prefecture, the Satetsu River has spent thousands of years carving a masterpiece through limestone. Two kilometers of sheer cliffs rising 50 to 100 meters, draped in moss and cascading wisteria, their ...

Imagine a beach so strikingly beautiful that Buddhist monks, upon first seeing it in the 17th century, declared it must be what paradise looks like — and named it accordingly. That beach is Jodogahama (浄土ヶ浜), and it sits on the rugge...

Picture 10,000 dancers flooding the streets of Yamagata City on a warm August evening, each one waving a flower-adorned straw hat overhead and chanting a hypnotic folk song in unison — the air thick with taiko drum beats, the street aliv...

Off the rugged tip of the Oshika Peninsula in Miyagi Prefecture, a small, forested island rises from the Pacific Ocean — and it might be the most otherworldly place in all of Tohoku. Kinkasan (金華山, literally “Golden Flower Mount...

Sendai is one of Japan’s most underrated big cities — a vibrant, livable metropolis of one million people that combines excellent food, a relaxed pace, and perhaps the most spectacular collection of day-trip destinations of any cit...

Imagine stepping off a ferry onto a small Japanese island where cats outnumber humans — where felines roam the harbor, sleep on fishing boats, and sun themselves on stone walls without a care in the world. That island is Tashirojima, Miy...

There’s a crater lake in the mountains of Yamagata that changes color. Not subtly — not the way a lake might shift from blue to gray as clouds pass overhead — but dramatically, alchemically, in shades that seem to defy ordinary che...