Japan Navigator

“How to escape Tokyo by its many train lines, and what to do once you are outside…”

Today we will follow the Tohoku Line, one of the oldest lines in Japan, already dating from the late 19th c. It starts in Ueno and runs 631.3 km to Aomori. The part we follow, to Kuroiso, is also called Utsunomiya Line and it is 163.3 km long. The Tohoku line shares part of its track with the Keihin-Tohoku Line and the Saikyo Line, but it stops at less stations.

The first stop out of Tokyo is Urawa (19 min from Ueno). Now part of the artificially created municipality of Saitama City (est. 2001), Urawa used to be a post station on the Nakasendo Highway and in modern times the capital of Saitama Prefecture. The city of 500,000 is both commercial, industrial and residential, and there is nothing here to keep you except when you are a fan of the Urawa Red Diamonds.

[Torii Hikawa Shrine, Omiya]

Next we come to Saitama Shintoshin (22 min from Ueno), a new station and business area laid out on an old JR switchyard in 2000. “Saitama New Urban Center” calls itself a megapolis so that is not much help if you wanted to get away from Tokyo. It boasts the Saitama Super Arena, restaurants, and shopping, shopping and more shopping. It features futuristic curved white tube-like roofs and unique statues. The Saitama Super Arena is only 3 min from the station and on the 4th and 5th floors you will find the John Lennon Museum. For 1,500 yen you can see 130 articles from Yoko Ono’s collection, including John Lennon’s guitars, handwritten lyrics, costumes, photos and so on. Great for fans, I suppose.

Moving on, we arrive at Omiya Station (25 min from Ueno). Like Urawa, Omiya (the busiest part of Saitama Prefecture) now is part of Saitama City. There are two interesting things to see here, both in Omiya Park, within walking distance from the station. In the first place the Hikawa Shrine, a major Shinto Shrine. It looks like other Shinto shrines in the Kanto, but it is a peaceful place and the park around it is beautiful with cherry blossoms in spring. On top of that, the Hikawa Shrine gave Omiya, which means “Great Shrine,” its name. Secondly, there is the Saitama Prefectural Museum of History and Folklore. Designed by famous architect Maekawa Kunio, it displays items on the history of the prefecture, from the Stone Age to modern times. There is a nice haniwa statue of a man playing a zither on his knee, a copy of a 5th c. local chieftain’s sword, a picture scroll made after the Taiheiki war chronicles and a suit of armor worn by the second Ashikaga lord, Toshimasa. The atrium in the basement is filled with itabi, Buddhist steles, of which many once stood alongside the roads in Saitama. And this all and much more for only 300 yen! Only a pity there is so little English.

[Saitama Prefectural Museum of History and Folklore, Omiya]

Next we have to do some serious riding, for there is nothing to see in Toro, Higashi-Ōmiya, Hasuda, Shiraoka, Shin-Shiraoka, Kuki, Higashi-Washinomiya, Kurihashi, Koga, Nogi, Mamada, Oyama, Koganei, Jichi-idai, Ishibashi and Suzumenomiya. Correct me, if I am mistaken. I would like to note that Koga, the one stop on the Tohoku Main Line in Ibaraki Prefecture, has many old buildings and is known for seal carving, but as it only has a website in Japanese it apparently has decided it is not interesting for foreign visitors. Oyama does have some English, but unfortunately there is nothing to see here. Oyama is Tochigi Prefecture’s second largest city and an important railway junction where you can transfer to the Mito and Ryomo lines to delve into deeper inaka, if Oyama isn’t enough already.

[Oyaji Temple, Utsunomiya]

So our next stop is Tochigi’s prefectural capital, Utsunomiya (1.45 hrs from Ueno by this line). As behooves a capital city, there are some interesting things here and in the vicinity. The best place by far is Oya , half an hour by bus from Utsunomiya. You’ll find the interesting Oya Temple here, located partly within a huge cavern, on the walls of which are 10 Buddhist images elaborately carved in relief. The Thousand-handed Kannon, the chief object of worship, is 4 meters high. The carvings are from the Heian Period and among the oldest stone Buddhist images in Japan. But even if you are not into Buddhist carvings, Oya is an interestingly weird spot. The hills here are composed of a kind of tuff stone, soft to work, but durable and beautiful to the eyes. Oya stone, as it has been called after the temple, has been quarried here for centuries. Further on down the road from the temple, a large quarry that is still operated, can be entered. After passing through the dusty museum room, where various implements whose real purpose will only be clear to mining experts are on display, you descend into the bowels of the earth and find yourself in a huge, cathedral-like vault, where over the centuries the rock has been cut away. The most famous use to which Oya stones were put was to clad the surface of the former Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1922.

[Utsunomiya Museum of Art]

The capital of Tochigi Prefecture itself is a rather sprawling city with a few good museums. The Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts is 15 min by bus from Utsunomiya Station and is dedicated to local art and temporary exhibitions; as the standing collection is rather small, aim for one of the latter. The Utsunomiya Museum of Art stands in the outskirts and takes 30 min to reach. This museum, too, is in the first place interesting when there is a good temporary exhibition.

Another museum that can be reached by bus from Utsunomiya (or from Ujiie, farther north) is the Nakagawa-machi Bato Hiroshige Museum. More interesting than the collection of works by Hiroshige and other ukiyo-e artists is the wonderful architecture by Kuma Kengo. Kuma works with local cedar wood, washi paper and stone in a wonderfully understated style. It is a 1.4 hr bus trip from Utsunomiya, so prepare youself for a long sit and check the bus time table at the museum site (English!).

[Unganji Temple, Kurobane]

From Utsunomiya you can also take the Nikko Line to Nikko, but we continue on the Tohoku Main Line passing Okamoto, Hōshakuji, Ujiie, Kamasusaka, Kataoka, Yaita and Nozaki before arriving in Nishi-Nasuno (2.25 hrs from Ueno). From this station you can take a 35-min bus to Kurobane, a magical small town where time seems to have stopped. Basho also liked it as he stayed here for two weeks at the start of the “Narrow Road to the Deep North.” The town has many haiku stones with Basho’s masterworks carved onto them, a Basho museum (”Basho no Yakata”) and a great, even magical temple: Unganji (a short taxi ride out of town). Unganji is completely off the tourist track, and so beautiful it will take your breath away… Read my posts about Kurobane and Unganji here and here.

In Kuroiso (2.35 hrs from Ueno), our final destination on this trip, you can do two things. For convenience sake, they are both on the same bus line. First, take a Toya bus from the station’s west exit to Nasu-Yumoto and get off at Ikkenjaya. A 5-min walk will land you at the Niki Museum of Art, dedicated to the colorful sculptures and paintings of French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002). This is pure fun, from the “shooting pictures” made by shooting with a rifle at canvasses with plastic pouches of paint hidden beneath plaster or wire mesh to Niki’s later “polyester works,” large and colorful sculptures of plump and often very large women. An example are the joyous sculptures in the Nana series, a sort of archetypal females.

[Jizo statues near the Killing Stone, Nasu]

When you continue by the same bus, you soon arrive at Nasu-Yumoto, where you can visit the Nasu-Yumoto Shrine (dedicated to two healing Shinto deities) and – 10 min away on the mountainside – the Killing Stone, another Basho landmark. It stands in a desolate spot with lots of somber Jizo statues on the slope of the Chausudake volcano and is well worth visiting. The town of Nasu-Yumoto is a nice spa town and as it happens, it is time for a good soak…

Of course this is too much for one day. Utsunomiya alone takes a whole day, as does Kurobane or Nasu-Yumoto. You can speed up things a bit by taking the Tohoku Shinkansen which stops at Utsunomiya and Nasu-Shiobara (between Nisho-Nasuno and Kuroiso).