I went to EVERY prefecture! – My Japan Grand Tour photo album. 都道府県を全国行った！

I went to EVERY prefecture! – My Japan Grand Tour photo album. 都道府県を全国行った！

Hi everyone, David here! Welcome back to the channel, thanks for coming back for another video, or welcome if it’s your first one! How are you doing? I’m doing OK I think it’s getting a bit cold it’s December now, the nights are

Drawing in, it’s getting a bit chilly as well. And I’m starting to think about the new year and finishing off all my loose ends. This year was a big finishing year because I managed to finish visiting all 47 Japanese

Prefectures, that was a bit of a personal mission I set for myself. I like that kind of completist-type task. Maybe it’s because I used to play Pokémon when I was a kid, just got to catch them all! So today I’m going to dedicate

That to my travels in Japan. I’m going to take you through all 47 prefectures. Hopefully it’s not going to take too long! I did a video a bit like this last year, I think I introduced each prefecture and something famous about

Each one. And when I went to all these prefectures I’d had this idea I wanted to make a photo album for myself to see where I’ve been, and keep a memory of places I’ve been to in each prefecture. More like a catalogue

/ photo album. But in making that, I selected all these photos so I thought I would show one from each prefecture to you. These photos aren’t supposed to be recommendations of where to go necessarily. It’s more photos that meant something to me in my travels. Either it was just a nice

Scene and it reminds me of particular trip I took there, or I just like it, it’s a nice picture. Or if it represents something about my journey. That sounds a bit grand, but you know what I mean. Anyway you’ll get the idea as it goes along. It’s not supposed to be a travel

Recommendation guide or anything like that. I’m going to do that, I’ve BEEN doing that constantly about Osaka for the last two and a half years, so please watch those if you’re interested. I’ve got so many, they need a bit more love!

So let me just get straight into these prefectures. I’ve listed them in order of the time I first arrived there. So I’ve had to go through the archives to work out when exactly, from the first time I visited Japan all the way to this

Summer when I finished the set. I counted them if I had some kind of experience or memorable activity there. So just passing through, driving through that doesn’t count. I think you’ll see what I mean as I explain myself later. So let’s just get straight into it. I’m going to get this presentation

Going, I’ll move myself into the little corner, I think I’m there already. Let’s start with my first prefecture which was Tokyo. My first holiday in Japan in 2007 that’s incredible now, that’s… what’s that? 16, 17 years ago? I can’t work out the maths. Yeah I stayed in Tokyo, so that was my

First stop. This is a beautiful picture I took – I’m just bragging – but it just turned out really nicely, of Tokyo Tower, which I think is one of the most iconic visions of Tokyo. I really like it a lot, more than the Sky Tree actually. I took this photo when the Olympics

Were being held or towards the end of it. I just wanted to be there to soak up some of the Olympic vibe. But it was very rainy for a few days, but I got this nice cloudy Tokyo Tower view. So I’ve got a lot of experiences in Tokyo but

That’s the one that comes to mind. Now during the same holiday I took a bus tour to Mount Fuji, so there we go. Pictured there, the first and probably the best picture I’ve ever taken of about Mt Fuji. It always seems to be

Wrong kind of cloud or it’s foggy or it’s obscured somehow. This took me to Yamanashi prefecture, where I took a little boat cruise as well on Lake Ashi, I think that’s the name of the lake, and I saw Mt. Fuji.

We drove up to the fifth station as well. Yamanashi – I did go back there again, we stayed at ryokan at some point in 2015, something like that, so that was a nice memorable trip to Yamanashi. In the same trip I went to Kamakura which is in Kanagawa, it’s written right

There, Kanagawa prefecture. It’s also famous for Yokohama which I didn’t go to until a little bit later, but the famous Daibutsu at Kotoku-in. And this is the famous image of Kamakura. You can go inside there as well, that’s a nice memory too.

No.4, I managed to get to Kyoto, I got totally lost if I remember correctly. Of course I’ve been to Kyoto many times since then, but this is a picture I took, I think, last year or the year before, just at sunrise.

I wanted to see the autumn leaves early so I went to Kiyomizu Temple. You can see that kind of lens flare, I was trying to be arty. But of course Kyoto city is the land of shrines and temples so that’s kind of emblematic of it.

Next – I actually came back for another trip in 2009 but I went to all the same prefectures again! In 2012 I went back for a third vacation and went to Nara this time, using my Japan Rail Pass, including

Kasuga Taisha – that’s hard to say – which is a shrine quite close to Todai-ji in Nara Park. So you can see the deer wandering around there. I was there on a beautiful clear day, I think this was just in the middle of coronavirus

So it was quite empty. Kasuga Taisha, very nice for the Wisteria flowers as well in June, they are lovely purple flowers. So I love Nara. In the same trip I went to Nikko, up north from Tokyo to a beautiful mountain city called Nikko. There is a famous Toshogu which is a Mausoleum.

I forgot whose it is, my history is a bit hazy when it comes to Japanese names, but I always like this kind of ceremonial traditional style bridge. You can’t actually walk over it, I don’t think… can you?

I think it was blocked off but it was a nice view and a nice valley. So yeah I enjoyed Nikko I really want to go there again next time. In that same trip I actually went to meet my Japanese teacher’s family,

Who very kindly showed me around Nagoya. This was taken a few years later when I went back for the cherry blossoms. Beautiful cherry blossoms in Nagoya! I think Nagoya gets a bit of a rough deal, because it’s very central but that means it’s kind of far away from other main cities.

It’s kind of in-between Tokyo and Kansai area, so it’s a little bit far to go sometimes. But yeah definitely go, you can see the Ghibli Museum as well. I made a video about those, I made two videos about that, I think! And then finally we get to

The time when I moved to Japan: April 2014, almost 10 years. I visited Osaka for the first time with a moving van! So I moved into Osaka and I haven’t moved anywhere else since then. I was trying to think

What picture to show Osaka off with, I think Shinsekai is a very Osaka area. We’ve got Tsutenkaku in the back there. Yeah I love Osaka, it’s… well this is the whole reason for this channel! So if you want to know more

About Osaka, please like, subscribe, all that stuff. I’m about ready to do my best 50 video – the best 50 places in Osaka – very soon, so please check that out! I thought instead of having another castle straight after Nagoya Castle, I thought Tsutenkaku is kind of a classic Osaka image, I think.

So next we get to Hyogo – I was starting to spread my tentacles out from Osaka to the neighbouring prefectures, so Hyogo is the next one along. This is where Kobe is, but also Himeji. Himeji Castle just got renewed,

Kind of renovated – I could say recently but it’s probably still about 8 years ago. A beautiful white castle. It’s kind of an unusual style really, usually castles are green, sometimes black, but this is a beautiful white castle. I think it’s called the “Crane Castle” because of the colour of it.

But yeah Himeji is a lovely place to visit. 10th – I made it to double figures in Wakayama. Wakayama is just south of Osaka, and one of my favourite places there is Koyasan. Koyasan is a mountain town with a lot of temples and, I think,

Japan’s largest or oldest graveyard as well,, which sounds a bit grim but it’s a very kind of restful beautiful place. And some other famous Buddhist temples too. I think one of the sects of Buddhism is based in Koyasan. I went there last

Year or the year before and I took a video walking in the snow. That is the same day I went to Kongobuji, one of the temples there. Really nice, peaceful place to walk around. You don’t get a lot of snow in Osaka too, so it was nice to see

That. OK number 11 Fukuoka, and this is the furthest west I had been. I actually went there for a Perfume concert in August 2014, but this photo was taken last year when I returned to really do Fukuoka properly. This was Itojima – this is nice sightseeing spot but

There’s a lot of nice places. I did a whole video about Fukuoka as well so yeah check that out too! I’m not going to do thumbnails for everything, I’m going to be exhausted! There we go, so that’s my first trip to Kyushu. Also west of Osaka we’ve got Hiroshima. I visited there with

My friend in summer and visited Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima. This is not far from Hiroshima City. Of course Hiroshima city has a lot of deep and dark history but a very interesting place to visit. And one of the three famous sights,

Three famous views of Japan is Itsukushima Shrine, the torii gate on the sea. I think I got really lucky with the timing on this one, I’d just got the beautiful day and no scaffolding covering it like I did last time.

The tide was in as well! When the tide’s out you can actually walk up to that gate too, you can see all the barnacles stuck all over it. And that’s the first new year in Japan, I went to Mie prefecture. Again, next

To -not neighbouring- Osaka, it’s the other side of Nara, I went to Ise Shrine, one of the most famous shrines in the whole country. And silly me went there during the busiest time possible, which is the Hatsumode time. So at the start of

New Year people visit famous shrines to pay their first respects of the year. This is the time I decided to go to Ise. But yeah that’s a beautiful city to go to. A huge shrine in the forest – it’s so huge it’s in two sections as well.

So go to Mie in the summer. I guess I spent a lot of time just wandering around in 2015, but I went to Shiga for the first time. I went to Hikone Castle. I feel like I went here the

First time in New Year but I’m not sure. Anyway Hikone Castle is one of the few original castles left in Japan. I think there’s only about 12 left. Most of them are reconstructions. For example Osaka Castle, Nagoya Castle, they’re all

Reconstructions, but Hikone is the real deal. Shiga is also home to Lake Biwa as well, the biggest lake in Japan. A nice peaceful rural place. My first trip to Shikoku happened at the end of 2015, I went to Tokushima, which is the closest one to Osaka. And this natural view was at

The Oboke and Koboke gorges – a tongue twister! Yeah, very nice rural mountainous place, there’s the Yoshino River that goes through it as well, which is very famous for being very clean. There’s a vine bridge you can cross over as well, so Tokushima has a few interesting natural spots too. They’ve

Got whirlpools next to Naruto Suspension Bridge, there a really good art museum there too. 2016 – my next year I moved on to Shizuoka. I did a bit of a double trip here to Shizuoka and stayed in Yamanashi, but in Shizuoka I saw Shiraito Falls.

A beautiful waterfall, of panoramic area. Very nice, I managed to catch a rainbow too, lovely! And you can see Mount Fuji very clearly from Shizuoka too. Mount Fuji is kind of on the border of Yamanashi and Shizuoka Then OK, I went on to the biggest one of all, Hokkaido in February 2016.

I think I’ve been there four times now. The first three times I went to Sapporo and saw the Snow Festival, which takes place in February, which is when this trip was. But this summer I also went there to see Hakodate and another one of

The famous night views of Japan. There’s three famous night views as well in addition to the three famous views. Where are they? There’s Mount Hakodate, there’s Rokko mountain in Hyogo prefecture, and there’s one more which I’ll tell you soon. But Hakodate is very beautiful, a coastal city and

Has a long history of foreign culture and foreign influence. So you can see my video about that as well, about Hakodate and Aomori. Next, going back to Shikoku, I went to Kagawa. My first trip to Kagawa was actually to an island off the coast of Kagawa, it’s called Aoshima, which

Has a lot of unusual art displays. And it’s got a small James Bond Museum as well, but one of those… if you’ve ever seen an Instagram picture of one of those big spotty pumpkins, it’s a sculpture, then that’s from Aoshima.

But I went to Kagawa again, I think, two years ago and visited Takamatsu. A really beautiful place, I had a really nice time in Takamatsu. And there’s this beautiful Japanese garden, Ritsurin Koen, famous for its black pine trees as well, Kuro Matsu, which I really like as well, so that suits me.

And beautiful Udon as well, very delicious Udon noodles. No.19 we go to Miyagi prefecture. This is on the East coast, this was where the devastating earthquake happened in 2011. And although I want to celebrate Miyagi prefecture, this photo always kind of stood out to me.

I took a trip with my friend who was living in Akita at the time. We met in Sendai, and we went to the coastal region. So you can see how the tsunami swept all the trees to one side. This is a Kaigan… well Kaigan

Just means Beach, but it was like an evacuation park for the tsunami. Obviously it wasn’t high enough for the particularly huge tsunami that happened then. But this was 5 years later and there were hopeful signs of regrowth. Of course the nature was coming back, but also

There was an abandoned High School which had a big sign saying thank you for all the support. So you could start to feel things rebuilding a bit, so that was actually a positive feeling to go there. Sendai is also famous for one of the

Three big — I don’t know, Japan loves “big three” things – summer festivals of the Tohoku area, which is Tanabata. That happens in August, that’s not the usual Tanabata time, which is the 7th of July. This happens in early August and it’s from using an old calendar. So check out the Tanabata at

Sendai. No. 20, we reached Yamaguchi prefecture. Actually I was visiting my friend in Hiroshima and we took a trip quick trip over the border to Yamaguchi to see Kintaikyo, the very distinctive bridge. Yeah a lovely bridge! Yamaguchi I went back to last year, was it this year?

Last year? I can’t remember now… when I went to see Yuda Onsen, so I did a video about that too, so check that out! I went underground to the biggest Limestone caves in Japan, that’s also in Yamaguchi – Akiyoshidou, I think it’s

Called. OK 21 we got to the North coast, to the Sanin area, which is the kind of the north coast of the west part of Japan. So we went to Tottori, which is famous for its sand dunes. A bit of an odd place to have sand dunes in

Japan, and right by the Sea as well! So the sand is just piled up and they’ve even got camels there, you can get a camel ride. So this was the shot I took. You can just see the sea peeping out over there. We parked on the wrong

Side of the sand dunes and we had a bit of a walk, but it’s a nice memory anyway. And I also visited Shimane. I think this was… I went to the Sand Dunes of Tottori on a different trip. So this trip I went to Tottori and

Shimane, so the beautiful Adachi Museum of Art. It’s got a lovely Japanese garden too. You can’t walk around in it but you can see it from the museum. It’s also got Matsue castle, that’s a nice place to go. And Izumo

Shrine, which is a famous shrine. I hope to visit that again one day because it was terrible weather last time I visited. So that’s Shimane. Going central now, we went to Gifu. My first trip in 2017 was to

Hakusan , which is an area around the mountains, and there’s a big ski resort there too. We actually stayed at the ski resort, but didn’t ski. We just wanted to see the winter atmosphere and that was really nice too. But it’s also

Home to among other things Shirakawa-go, one of the very famous touristy traditional villages. You can see, just about, these triangular cottages made in the traditional Japanese style. They’ve been preserved, I think they’re a UNESCO world heritage tangible asset or something like that, one of those

UNESCO things. Definitely try that out! I went there at the very start of December, so if you want to see it with the snow scene, which is also famous, go a little bit later, maybe in the first few months of the year, it’s better. But

Gifu, yeah there’s a lot of places to see in Gifu. Ishikawa came after that, at the end of 2017. We visited Kanazawa, which is a beautiful town. It used to be a very big town as well, I think a lot of

People got evacuated there during the war, so that kind of helped boost its popularity. But now it’s quite… I don’t know, quite a modern feeling place to visit for tourists. It’s got traditional Kanazawa castle ruins, I think they are. Kenroku-en, one of the big three Japanese

Gardens too. There’s Kenroku-en in Kanazawa, there is another one in Okayama, one in Ibaraki, I believe, but Kenroku-en is definitely the most beautiful one, if you ask me. And you can see because the snow gets very heavy, that weighs down on the

Pine trees and breaks their branches. So they’ve got these very distinctive rope, like maypoles, that are supporting the branches, so the snow doesn’t break all the trees. It also has the 21st Century Museum as well, so you can see the modern side of Kanazawa too. OK I was talking about night

Views before, this is the other of the three. So I said Hakodate and Rokko in Hyogo and now Mount Inasa in Nagasaki. I went there on a full moon as well, this is a really beautiful night view. I think this might be my favourite of the three.

Nagasaki is an amazing place to stay, I just stayed in Nagasaki City, but there’s so much to do there. Also it has a lot of foreign influence too, so there’s a lot of mix of cultures. There a big Chinatown, there’s the very unique Gunkan-jima, which is an abandoned coal mining island, which was

A very dense colony. I think one of the most densely populated places in the world, or in Japan. It’s all closed down now, but you can still visit there by boat. Yeah Nagasaki has got loads of things to see, so if you want to plan a

Two-day trip, definitely take a look at Nagasaki! Next, Saga. I think this was part of the same trip as well, I was doing one of my little tours. I started from Nagasaki and moved up to Saga, where my friend was. We took a boat from… I can’t remember what the place

Place was called, but we took a boat to these famous Natatsugama caves, which means the seven seaside caves. They’re very unusual, they’ve got this strange volcanic rock as well, it kind of reminds me of the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland in the UK. You can visit those

By a quite short boat trip from Yobuko, something like that. I put Karatsu here but that’s a nearby town. So that’s Saga, and I continued my trip through Kyushu to Oita, famous for its hot springs in Beppu. Or Yufuin, that’s also a

Famous hot spring place. I didn’t actually take a hot spring while I went to Beppu, which is a bit of a shame. Oh no I did, I did take a mud bath, which was not as nice as it sounded. It was quite cold and just felt with the

Grotty and horrid. But Beppu, you can try the Jigoku Meguri, the Hell Tour. It’s kind of fearful name but there’s seven different hot springs with different characteristics. This one’s like a giant hot pot, there’s a water spout one, there’s one that’s filled with crocodiles for some reason, don’t ask me!

But yeah, go there for your hot spring needs! Then I returned to the Hokuriku area, which is kind of the north part of the middle of Japan. Fukui prefecture with Tojimbo. I was just talking about those caves in Saga but these also have a kind of unusual rock structure. These are

Distinctive cliffs by the sea, although people keep telling me they’re famous for people jumping off and killing themselves. But fortunately I didn’t see any of any of that. Fukui is a very nice quiet rural place, now accessible by the Hokuriku Shinkansen or will be very soon. There’s an amazing

Dinosaur museum there, which I thought would just be normal but it really impressed me. And Eihei-ji, I think that’s the big shrine as well. That’s got a huge Buddha repository as well so come to Fukui! Back to Shikoku now, going to Ehime, to Dogo Onsen in Matsuyama City. Dogo Onsen is

Another one of the famous onsen towns in Japan. There’s quite a few of those but this one is supposedly famous for inspiring the bath house exterior from Spirited Away by Studio Ghibli. I can kind of see that I guess, but yeah a

Nice place to visit, a very traditional hot spring. We stayed at a nice Ryokan, a Japanese Inn, so that’s a really nice memory for me. OK now back up north to Tohoku. I went to Akita and I saw the third — no,

No this is only the second of the Tohoku summer festivals. This is the Akita Kanto Festival, where people hold these giant – I think they’re bamboo – these giant Lantern poles. So Kanto means these big poles in their hands, carrying all these lanterns as well.

I think one of them can weigh about 50 kg. And then one person’s balancing it on their hands, sometimes on their head, sometimes on their shoulder, sometimes on the small of their back, very interesting! And it’s a bit of a contest to see who can do the most interesting moves with their

Lanterns, so that’s a really unique festival. I think that could be one of my favourite festivals I’ve ever seen in Japan. Actually it’s a bit of a long way to go, but it was worth it definitely. And just to get the full

House on Shikoku, I went back to Kochi prefecture, where my friend is living. I think he’s still there. I had a very rainy day after a very long trip, I think it was just after a typhoon had passed. But this was the day I was going

Back, I went to Kochi Castle. If you’ve ever seen the movie Ocean Waves, another Studio Ghibli one, that was set in Kochi. It’s quite a large prefecture so I think there are more treasures that I need to unearth, so I might go back there again soon and visit my friend.

OK up to 32 – I decided to try and finish off the Kyushu prefectures, so I did another little combo tour. I went to Miyazaki first – this is on the east coast of Kyushu. This is Udo Shrine, this is kind

Of unusual, it’s built inside a cave. So people go down there – this was New Year as well, so there’s a lot of people coming for Hatsumode, the first shrine visit. Yes, a nice place to visit. There’s no huge places to go in Miyazaki, but there are a lot of

Unique tourist attractions. There’s a tidal island you can visit, which has got very interesting rock formations, if you’re into rock formations. I guess I am, that’s called Aoshima, I think. And there’s some Easter Island heads, for some reason as well. So it’s full of surprises in Miyazaki.

I want to go back there again one day to see Takachiho, which is kind of a gorge with waterfalls either side. Yeah one day I’ll go back there. And carrying along to the southern tip of Kyushu was Kagoshima, and from the city you can see Sakurajima, which is the most active

Volcano in Japan. It has erupted several times, it’s even grown a bit! It used to be an island and now it’s joined on to the mainland. It’s not technically an island any more, but you can take a boat there. They’ve got a nice aquarium, they’ve got a nice traditional Japanese garden where

You can see Sakurajima in the background. And you can take a trip around Sakurajima, which is also famous for growing these huge vegetables as well. So yeah interesting if you don’t mind a bit of danger! And then completing the Kyushu island, I went to

Kumamoto, famous for Kumamon, if you’ve seen that mascot before. A kind of black and white bear. And you can take a trip to the Mount Aso National Park, which is another active volcano, but it’s not as active as Sakurajima. It’s huge though,

You can see the park and it’s a very wide, flat land, but you realize there’s these very tall cliffs on either side. You can’t even see one side from the other side, it’s so huge. And then you realize all of this is a volcanic crater.

That’s a bit chilling… you can take a take a bus trip all the way to the top of the crater as well. They did have an eruption, I think there was an earthquake in 2016 or something like that, so now some of it’s

Out of action. But you can go up there depending on how gassy it’s feeling that day. You can even go down into the crater a little bit. I couldn’t go in because of too much gas, but I could peer in. If you’re into volcanoes try Kumamoto!

Now at this point I was starting to realize that I’d been to a lot of prefectures, I think around the 30 mark, I realized without intentionally trying to clear them all, I thought “Hang on, maybe I could do them all!” So you can start to see my combo trips popping up now.

So one of these was to Toyama, which is another fairly rural prefecture on the top of the Hokuriku area. And it’s home to the beautiful Tateyama Kurobe Alpine route, which is a route between Toyama City and part of Nagano. I don’t know which city exactly, but you can see this beautiful

Mountain range at the top. This is the Japanese Alps, you can see Tateyama which had some snow – I think that’s snow – on the floor there. This was in August, and August gets very hot in Japan, but it’s cool enough

There to keep up with the snow. Yeah beautiful views, you can see Kurobe Dam as well, which is a huge dam. It’s a nice area too, you can go on a boat around that valley and go all the way over the

Other side by various types of trains, cable cars, and tunnels to Nagano prefecture which is where I ended up. I visited Matsumoto Castle. This is another famous castle. It’s again unusual for its black colour, it’s very distinctive. There was a huge line to get in. I didn’t have a good time in Nagano

Actually, because it was so hot, and we had to wait outside for such a long time. I felt like I was going to get heat stroke or something. But yeah, I lived to tell the tale. I want to go back to Nagano one day, maybe if I

Visit Tokyo again sometime soon, I can go to Karuizawa, which is another famous resort place there. It looks like a very beautiful place. 37 – Okinawa – the very southernmost, western-most prefecture. Okinawa is a island chain south of Kagoshima, mostly famous for its beaches, beautiful sea and

Resort islands too. And also it has a famous aquarium. I don’t know, I really like this picture of the whale sharks. There it’s a huge aquarium I think it’s got one of the biggest single tanks in in Japan, possibly anywhere. Or at

One point it was one of the biggest ones. So Chiraumi Aquarium, a really nice place to visit, especially if it’s too hot. They’ve got some huge limestone caves as well in the main Okinawa island too. After that I was tidying up

The prefectures. I did another combo trip. this time I went to Iwate prefecture. It was a little bit hard to find somewhere easy to visit in Iwate. I’m sure there’s a lot of interesting things there, maybe the most famous one is Chuson-ji, which as you can see it’s

In the city of Hiraizumi. There’s a famous golden pavilion inside that building. I couldn’t take any pictures inside there, so unfortunately you have to make do with the outside. But there’s something quite nice about going to this mountainous foresty area, so I enjoyed my walk around there, even if the

Weather was pretty awful. I continued that trip to Yamagata Yamagata Prefecture is famous for Yamadera, which is a mountainous shrine area. So you’re hiking up and seeing all these shrines all the way up. Unfortunately it was closed at that time, because it was the middle

Of winter. It was snowing a lot as well, but there were lovely views from the top to see the rest of the valley, so Yamadera. Yamagata city was quite nice as well, I stayed there overnight and there’s a few nice historical places to visit there. And then on the way back, going

Back to the airport I went to Niigata. I didn’t have a very good time Niigata the first time I went there, but this year I returned, and I made another video about that in about February, March time. I decided to go to Sadogashima, which

Is the kind of lightning bolt-shaped island just to the north of the prefecture. They’ve got a gold mine there, that’s a famous point, and because the gold mine’s quite close, they had these processing plants too. They processed the ore, so this is the Kitazawa Flotation Plant. It’s all grown

Over and shut down now, I think in the ’90s, and it’s starting to be reclaimed by nature. It had a very Ghibli Laputa vibe about it, so I enjoyed that. So check out Niigata if you have a chance. On to the last seven now, so Gunma!

I decided to make a big Kanto trip, because I’d only really been to Tokyo around there. So there were a lot of prefectures around Tokyo that I hadn’t been to. So Gunma was the first to visit. And Kusatsu onsen – this is one of the other big famous onsen

Towns in Japan. So beautiful, smelly but lovely open air hot springs. This is just in the town square, you can see it all open there. But there’s a lot of open air baths you can visit. So yes, a very charming little town.

Next on the list was Fukushima. Probably you’ve heard of this prefecture because of the nuclear meltdown that happened in 2011 because of the earthquake, but it’s a big prefecture. There’s only quite a small area that’s been cordoned off, so don’t worry, it’s safe to visit there. I took a day trip to

Ouchijuku, which is another traditional style village. You can see the path down the middle of that. Again we’ve got these traditional thatched roof village cottages. I think this dates back to the Edo period, which is about 200 years ago, something like that. So it’s a nice beautiful rural place, the taxi driver was

Really chatty as well, I really enjoyed that. Also on this trip I went to Chiba prefecture. My friend drove me down to Tateyama right at the southern tip of Chiba and got this nice view of the bay. Tateyama doesn’t really have that that much to do off-season. I think this was around the

Typhoon time, so it was a bit rainy and horrible, but I think it’s quite a busy resort place. Surfing takes place there, so a lot of surfers on the beach. Chiba is also famous for Tokyo Disney, but I’ve never been there yet.

That’s in Chiba. Ibaraki – this was a bit of a tricky one without a car, it was difficult to go to the other recommended spots, but I visited there, to Mito, which is home to another one of the three big

Japanese Gardens. Like I said, one of them was in Kanazawa, one of them is in Okayama and this one is in Mito. Again, I kind of went a bit off-season, so it wasn’t really the best place to go in middle of August, but I did see this very strange

Art museum in Mito Town Centre. Mito is the prefectural capital. I don’t know what’s going on here, they’re supporting this rock in an art display. It looks like they’re summoning Gozer or something from Ghostbusters. Yeah so go to Ibaraki, you might want to take a car though if you

Can there’s… I think there’s a giant Kannon statue. There’s a flower park as well, I think. So it’ll be nice to explore that again one day. Now the last one of my Kanto trip was Saitama. It’s kind of a commuter belt place, so a lot of people live there to

Travel to TokyoIt’s on the main train line. But one of my friends lives there, so I went to visit Kawagoe, which is considered a little Kyoto. It’s got this traditional shopping street, it’s very kind of oldy-worldy. It was a little bit of a shame because there’s a main road going right through it,

So it’s hard to get a nice historical vibe. But it’s a nice place to walk around, there’s a nice shrine there too. So check out Saitama! I want to go there again one day and see if I can explore a bit more.

46 – I definitely passed through Okayama before, but this was the first time I’d really visited there. I went to Kurashiki, I think two years ago, using one of the Saikoro Kippu campaigns. Kurashiki, a very Charming little traditional town, they are famous for the canal, and you can take a little boat

Ride down there, although this canal is just as far as you can see in the picture and then about the same around the corner as well. So it’s not a very long canal, but a very quaint charming part of the town. I really want to

Go back to see Okayama castle and the other Japanese garden, but that was closed due to COVID at that time, and renovations. And that takes me to the final prefecture, finally we got there to Aomori I saw the Aomori Nebuta festival,

I hopefully you’ve seen the video I posted in August or September. This is the third of the Tohoku summer festivals, so this is celebrating Tanabata as well I guess, and celebrate trying to get a good harvest. You can see these beautiful huge paper lantern style carnival floats. And I

Think I’ve got a whole video, it’s about an hour long. You can watch the whole parade if you want to. I hope somebody watches it because it was fun to watch definitely. And that was my last prefecture, that took me from end to end!

I was really happy to finish on Aomori, because that was one of the festivals I’d been really wanting to see for ages. I couldn’t do it with my old job because of the scheduling, and then Coronavirus happened and finally I got my chance, and that was a fitting grand finale

To my trip all around Japan. So there we go, that’s the whole list! Thank you for watching, I hope those are interesting. How many have you been to, you’ve been to Japan already? Or which ones do you want to go to? Please let

Me know in the comments, please like this video, I really hope you appreciated this because I enjoyed making it. Share this video with your Japan-loving friends who want to get inspiration of where to go next time they visit Japan.

And of course share the channel, I would really like that… did I just say share? Share it twice! And subscribe as well, that would really help me out. I’m really trying to build up this channel and you can help me, so thank you for

Watching! I hope that didn’t take too long, and hope you come back for the next video. Take care see you again, bye!

My Japanese Grand Tour – I went to every prefecture in Japan.

This year I finally completed something I had been aiming at for several years. After travelling to many interesting places after I moved to Osaka in 2014, I wondered if I could visit all 47 prefectures in Japan.

With a bit of planning, too much money and not enough research, I finally completed that challenge in Summer 2023 when I visited Aomori (I have a video on that!).

So as 2023 comes to an end, I thought I would wrap things up and show you my photo album. Don’t worry, it’s only 47 photos – I wanted to choose an image that either reminded me of my trip, or somehow encapsulates the feeling I get when I think of each prefecture. I hope you enjoy it!

If you have any questions about the places I’ve been to, let me know in the comments.

Well, just leave a comment anyway, I’d appreciate it! Also, liking the video, sharing it with your friends, and of course subscribing, they all help this channel a lot!

I know I made a mistake – The capital of Saitama Prefecture is Saitama City… I checked it so much too… never mind! I hope it was fun.

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