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Yamagata
18 places
Holidays in Japan? Plan them with us.Over 2,000 real places, a day-by-day itinerary.FreeOpen the map →- Bunshōkan The former prefectural office, from 1916, is free and is the finishing point of the Hanagasa parade.
- Chidō Museum Its garden, a national Place of Scenic Beauty, looks onto the Sakai family house.
- Domon Ken Photography Museum One hundred and thirty-five thousand photographs donated: the first museum in Japan devoted solely to photography.
- Ginzan Onsen Rebuilt after the 1913 flood, every evening it lights up with gas lamps.
- Haguro-san Five-storey Pagoda A third of the way up the 2,446 sacred steps stands the pagoda from 1372, the oldest in Tōhoku.
- Kamo Aquarium Close to bankruptcy in 1971, it now displays 70 species of jellyfish: a Guinness record since 2012.
- Kumano Taisha, Nanyō (熊野大社) Three rabbits carved on the back grant a wish: you have to find the third one yourself.
- Mount Gassan A sacred peak of 1,984 m: you can ski from April to July on snow that never melts.
- Risshaku-ji (Yamadera) One thousand and fifteen stone steps climb to the Godaidō, hanging sheer over the valley.
- Sankyō Sōko Twelve rice warehouses from 1893, with a double roof for air and a screen of zelkova trees.
- Sōmarō Rebuilt after the 1894 fire around the storehouse that survived: people still dance here today.
- Tendō Chess Piece Museum Tendō makes over 90% of shōgi pieces, which began as work for the poorest samurai.
- Uesugi Shrine It stands on the old okugoten of Yonezawa Castle, which never had a tenshu.
- Yamagata Castle Ruins (Kajō-kōen) Only moats and earthworks remain of the castle of the daimyō Mogami Yoshiaki: no tenshu.
- Yamagata Yatai-mura Hotto Naru Yokocho Opened on 26 June 2009, it was the first true yatai-mura in Yamagata Prefecture: the eleven operators stay three years before moving to a…
- Yudono-san Shrine It has no building: the deity is a warm rock from which water springs, and it cannot be photographed.
- Zaō Juhyō (the ‘snow monsters’) The Siberian wind coats the fir trees in ice until they look like white monsters.
- Zaō Onsen The water gushes out at pH 1.6, among the most acidic in Japan, from springs opened 1,900 years ago.