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Okayama
25 places
Holidays in Japan? Plan them with us.Over 2,000 real places, a day-by-day itinerary.FreeOpen the map →- Aeon Mall Okayama (イオンモール岡山) Three urban spaces stacked on top of one another, with a roof garden: 250,000 m² next to the station.
- Bicchū Kokubunji (備中国分寺) The only five-storey pagoda in Okayama: 34 metres, completed in 1847 among the rice paddies.
- Bitchū Matsuyama Castle At 430 metres, the only mountain castle in Japan with its original tenshu still standing.
- Former Nozaki Residence and Salt History Museum The house of the ‘salt king’: 3,000 tsubo and six storehouses full of tools from the salt fields.
- Fukiya, the red village Houses and roof tiles in the same iron red, at 550 metres, by craftsmen who came from Iwami.
- Hiruzen Plateau At 500 metres above sea level, the largest Jersey cow farming area in Japan.
- Inbe, the Bizen pottery village No glaze: the red of Bizen comes from the fire, and no two pieces are ever alike.
- Inujima (犬島) 49 inhabitants in 2016: Okayama city's only inhabited island, 8 minutes away by ferry.
- Inujima Refinery Museum (犬島精錬所美術館) No grid electricity: the museum is heated and lit by the sun and geothermal energy.
- Kibitsu-jinja A 360-metre covered corridor climbs between the shrines on the slope of Kibi-no-Nakayama.
- Kibitsuhiko-jinja At the summer solstice the sun rises in line with the torii, the shrine's gateway.
- Kojima Jeans Street Japan's first jeans were made here in 1965, by people who had previously sewn school uniforms.
- Kōrakuen Built over 13 years on an island: the black castle is borrowed scenery.
- Kurashiki Bikan Historic District A rice storehouse of the shogunal domain from 1642; today you can travel the canal by rowing boat.
- Kurashiki Golden Yokochō A ’40s alley that had dwindled to two venues, remade in 2013 with fifteen signs going up together.
- Kurashiki Ivy Square (倉敷アイビースクエア) The ivy on the red bricks regulated the temperature when cotton was spun here (1889).
- Ohara Museum of Art Japan's first museum of Western art, since 1930: inside, El Greco's Annunciation.
- Ōhashi Residence (大橋家住宅) Only the Ōhashi family was granted a nagayamon gate, which was denied to the other houses.
- Okayama Castle Black and gold, ‘the crow’: it burned in 1945 and was rebuilt in 1966 from pre-war drawings.
- Omotechō Shōtengai 1.4 km of covered arcade, eight streets joined when a feudal lord moved the road there.
- Saidaiji Eyō (会陽), the naked festival In 1510 the faithful stripped off to fight over a monk's amulets: and so the rite was born.
- Shiraishi-jima Thirteen dances in thirteen costumes, all to the same music, on the sand in mid-August.
- Tsuyama Castle (Kakuzan Park) Eleven hundred cherry trees above stone walls: in 1873 everything was dismantled except the walls themselves.
- Washuzan Highland (鷲羽山ハイランド) From the park you can see the Seto Ōhashi, the longest road-rail bridge in the world, since 1988.
- Yunogo Onsen Discovered, so the legend goes, by watching a heron heal its leg in the hot water.