Castle-Towns

Osaka’s tourist infrastructure is so well-developed that it can feel like the city is trying to keep you inside it — there’s always another food street, another neighborhood, another castle to see (its own castle being the obvious one). But the Kansai region around Osaka is one of the most historically layered parts of Japan, and within two or three hours in any direction lie castle towns that saw more history than most countries manage in a millennium. ...

Tokyo is an extraordinary city, but it has a gravitational pull that keeps most visitors locked within its orbit — or sends them shooting directly to Kyoto on the Shinkansen without stopping. What they miss is a ring of historic castle towns within two or three hours of the city, places where feudal Japan left its mark in stone walls, samurai districts, and merchant streets that survived the 20th century more or less intact. ...