Chiba Travel Guide

The easternmost point of the Kanto region — a lighthouse-topped cape where the Kuroshio Current meets the Oyashio Current, creating Japan's richest inshore fishing waters. Choshi Port is Japan's #1 sardine and saury landing port; the morning market sells fresh-grilled aji (horse mackerel) from open braziers on the harbour quay.

A tiny rural railway of 26km running through the rice paddies and cedar valleys of inland Boso Peninsula. In spring, the entire right-of-way is lined with rapeseed (nanohana) blossoms between the stations. Heritage diesel cars painted in vivid colours pass cherry trees and plum orchards — the finest spring countryside train ride near Tokyo.

A 66km straight sandy beach — Japan's second longest — facing the Pacific Ocean on the Boso Peninsula's eastern coast. The consistent surfable waves, the wide open beach with no buildings on the ocean side, and the inoshishi (wild boar) that occasionally wander down from the coastal forest make this a wild Pacific experience.

A 85-hectare waterfront park on Tokyo Bay with the finest cosmos flower fields (autumn) and spring tulip gardens in the greater Tokyo area. The seaside promenade with distant Fuji views and the contrast of flower fields against the bay and Makuhari convention towers makes for surprisingly photogenic scenery in an otherwise suburban area.

A 250-hectare working farm on the Boso Hills overlooking Tokyo Bay — famous for its seasonal flower spectacles: tulips in spring, sunflowers in summer, cosmos in autumn. The farm also keeps Jersey cows, Berkshire pigs, and sheep (shearing shows daily), making it the finest agricultural experience accessible from Tokyo.

A 329-metre mountain on the Boso Peninsula whose summit ridge is jagged like a saw blade (nokogiri = saw). The mountain is covered in over 1,000 stone Buddhist carvings, a giant Daibutsu (31.05m — taller than Nara's), and a cliff-edge viewpoint called Jigoku-nozoki (Hell-gazing Overhang) where visitors are photographed dangling over a 100-metre drop.

One of Japan's most visited temples — receiving over 10 million visitors a year. Founded in 940 CE, the Shingon temple complex covers 165,000 square metres with five buildings designated as Important Cultural Properties. The old town (Omotesando approach) still has unagi (eel) restaurants that have served travellers since the Edo period.

A 4-minute gondola ascent over the Uraga Channel to the summit of Mt Nokogiri with views stretching from Tokyo Bay to the Izu Peninsula, the Miura Peninsula, and on clear days, Mt Fuji directly west. The western slope is covered in former quarry walls of cut stone — a dramatic industrial landscape now being reclaimed by moss and fern.

A fishing port and surf town on the Pacific coast of the Boso Peninsula with genuinely good swimming beaches, fresh local lobster (ise-ebi), and an arts community that moved here from Tokyo. The mural-covered old town streets and the fishing harbour where lobster boats return at dawn give it an authenticity missing from better-known beaches.

An old castle town whose park-covered earthworks contain Japan's finest local history museum (National Museum of Japanese History — the largest in Japan, covering everything from Jomon to Meiji). The surrounding moat area has the best non-Kyoto cherry blossom walk in eastern Japan — 3,000 trees along 4km of moat-side paths.