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When The Telegraph journalist, Gemma Knight-Gilani, saw our Hidden Zen trip, she was so excited by the itinerary, it became part of her honeymoon.
Fresh from her trip, she shared her top five cultural experiences in Toyama – an often skipped-over region that holds some of the most skilled crafters in Japan. Here, you can experience how rural communities lived 350 years ago, mould your own sake cup and taste wine at one of Japan’s few wineries.
Gemma kindly agreed to share her top five cultural experiences to be found in Toyama. Here they are.
Less than two hours from Tokyo, stunningly picturesque, utterly unspoilt, and overflowing with the sort of intricate, storied crafts and customs that make Japan such catnip for overseas visitors, it’s peculiar – shocking, even – that pretty, unassuming Toyama prefecture remains so often missed by tourists.
And yet, it does. The hordes, for the most part, still go south, along Honshu’s eastern coast and the well-loved “Golden Route”, or north to Hokkaido with its ski slopes and rugged landscapes. But few make the short journey west, to where Toyama sprawls inland from a huge horseshoe bay, creeping across a large floodplain – dotted with grand, black-eaved houses (coloured thus to encourage snow melt), each one surrounded by rice paddies – then climbing slowly up towards the Northern Alps.
The few who do make this little leap across the country’s midriff, however, are treated to a perfect slice of everyday Japan: neither rurally isolated nor aggressively urban, but replete with modern communities working hard to preserve their cultural heritage, and keen to help visitors gain greater understanding of Japan’s history and customs by immersively experiencing it. Here are five wonderful ways to do just that.
Says Farm Winery
Start with a gentle introduction to the region’s pleasures, meandering up through the hills just outside coastal Himi to lovely (relative) newcomer Says Farm (driving is easiest, though it’s also accessible by bus). Wineries are still few and far between in Japan, but that didn’t stop the farm’s founders purchasing a large plot of abandoned farmland in the spring of 2008, and speculatively planting a single grape sapling. Now, just 16 years later, Says cultivates 18,000 European grapes on approximately seven hectares of land – and doesn’t plan to stop there. Its delicious, delicate wines may be new, but they can certainly hold their own, and the farm is a delightful spot to visit on a sunny day, with spectacular views down across the fields to Toyama’s glorious horseshoe bay. The staff offer tours (of the cellars, vineyards, fermentation room, etc), as well as tastings, and there’s a small guesthouse and gourmet restaurant, a particularly excellent rosé – plus the excellent companionship of resident dog, Maiko, and several goats.
Gokayama Ainokura Gassho-Style Village
High in the hills above Nanto, close to Toyama’s border with neighbouring prefecture Ishikawa, is the slightly surreal little village of Ainokura, a UNESCO World Heritage Site set on a plateau high above the Shogawa River. Visiting provides a magnificent opportunity to see typical steeply pitched gassho-zukuri (thatched-roof) houses dating from the Edo period, and to appreciate the way in which rural communities would have lived in this part of Japan as much as 350 years ago. There are other, smaller gassho-style villages nearby (Suganuma in Gokayama, and Ogimachi in Shirakawa-go), though Ainokura is by far the most impressive – not only for the chance it offers to see inside the farmhouses (one is a small cafe and shop, another a folk museum, and another a perfectly preserved washi paper-making hall) – but also because most of the houses are still private residences, and the village itself, for all its history and remoteness, still a functioning community of more than 20 families.
Nousaku Factory
Next, head for the city of Takaoka, in the prefecture’s northwest, where you’ll find Nousaku – its name a fusion of the Japanese terms ‘nou’ (skill) and ‘saku’ (creating). The building and its interiors are sleek and futuristic, a strange contradiction, considering that the brand has existed for some 400 years, originally manufacturing Buddhist ritual objects, Japanese tea-ceremony utensils and flower vases made of brass and bronze. Today, it creates beautiful modern homeware which could look slightly Scandinavian – including the flexible tin basket, KAGO, a table decoration which plays on tin’s innate malleability. There’s a fabulous open-plan factory shop on the ground floor displaying hundreds of creative and unusual products (these make beautiful gifts and are astoundingly reasonably priced), but the real fun lies in the opportunity to mould your own sake cup using the traditional sand casting method – an activity intended to help visitors more fully appreciate the craft element of the production. As a bonus, you get to keep your sake cup – which will come in handy later.
Rakudo-An & Taiko Drumming
You’ll want to bed down at pioneering ‘art hotel’ Rakudo-an, a renovated 120-year-old, paddy-ringed farmhouse on the outskirts of the small city of Tonami. Here, modern touches are artfully combined with traditional craft and design; guests are welcomed with a classic matcha tea ceremony, and given various opportunities for insight into the local community and its traditions. Amongst the most delightful of these is an evening spent in a nearby community centre – the office of the neighbouring Kuwano Shrine – where visitors are invited to watch the local Isami Taiko (traditional dance drumming) group rehearse. The performances are spectacular, intense displays of skill and timing, and the troupe members themselves span the gamut from long-practised master to determined novice – a fantastic window into an art lovingly passed down through generations. But beyond the spectacle and skill, it is the intimacy and informality of the experience which makes it so unique: the sense that you are witnessing something private rather than public, and that while you’re learning the most basic of drumming exercises, you are – very briefly – their newest apprentice.
Wakatsuru Saburomaru Distillery
On the opposite side of Tonami – barely 10 minutes from Rakudo-an by local train (on the Johana Line from Takagi Station) – is Wakatsuru Saburomaru; the third-oldest whisky distillery in Japan, and a fitting way to end your time in Toyama. The site began as, and is still home to, the historic Wakatsuru Sake Brewery, which opened in 1862, and has traditionally used water from the Shogawa Valley to brew its product. It was in 1952, however, when a rice shortage following the Second World War brought sake production to a temporary halt, that Kotaro Inagaki, son of the brewery’s founder, applied for – and was granted – a whisky licence. In 1953, the distillery released the blended Sunshine Whiskey, and the rest, as they say, is history. Today, both the brewery and distillery offer tastings (you’ll have to ‘win’ your sake cup in a gachapon machine before you can start sipping, however – unless you remembered to bring your hand-made Nousaku vessel), as well as fabulously detailed tours of the various buildings and a small museum. Guides speak excellent English, and take great pride in explaining its development of the world’s first cast pot still, ZEMON, which was invented by Kotaro Inagaki’s great-grandson, Takahiko, in 2019.
Visit Toyama as part of our Hidden Zen Self-Guided Adventure, or as part of your own cultural adventure.
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Image credit: Gemma Knight-Gilani