Japan's Hidden Gems — Places Most Tourists Never Reach

A narrow gorge where volcanic lava cooled into towering basalt columns, with the 17-metre Manai Falls spilling into the emerald-green river below. The Japanese consider this the land of the gods in the creation myth. The highlight is rowing a boat in close to the falls yourself — an image you won't forget.

Japan's largest coastal sand dunes, running about 16 kilometres along the Sea of Japan. Climb to the highest ridge and the sea stretches out as far as you can see — it feels like a desert, but it's in Japan. Try a camel ride, sandboarding, or paragliding, then stop by the Sand Museum next door, where sculptors from around the world carve in sand.

An ancient network of walking trails on the Kii Peninsula that emperors and pilgrims have travelled for over a thousand years. Stone-paved paths wind through tall cedar forest, past tiny shrines, to the three grand shrines (Kumano Sanzan). It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, twinned with Spain's Camino de Santiago — and walking it brings a stillness you won't find in the city.

One of Japan's most remote valleys, in the heart of Shikoku, with steep cliffs, an emerald-green river, and as its highlight the Kazurabashi — a bridge genuinely woven from living vines, strung across the valley. Crossing it gets your legs shaking every time (you can see straight down to the water). It's said the Heike warrior clan hid here after fleeing war 800 years ago, and the autumn foliage is stunning.

A peninsula jutting into the Sea of Japan north of Kanazawa, with a rugged, jagged coastline, the Shiroyone Senmaida terraced rice fields stepping down to the sea, fishing villages, and the centuries-old craft of Wajima lacquerware. It's a coastal road trip the Japanese themselves still adore — quiet and beautiful in a way that's become hard to find.

A cluster of islands in the Sea of Japan off the Shimane coast, designated a UNESCO Global Geopark for towering sea cliffs like Matengai, which rises more than 250 metres, clifftop meadows where horses and cattle roam free, and exceptionally clear water. Few people make it out here, so the islands keep their old, original character fully intact.

The northeast of Honshu is the region foreign tourists tend to skip, even though it's packed with good things — Ginzan Onsen, where wooden Taisho-era ryokan line the river under lamplight, at its most beautiful on a snowy night; mountains, rice fields, and grand summer festivals; the kind of quiet rural atmosphere you can't find in the big cities.

A small island in the Seto Inland Sea that has turned itself into an open-air contemporary art museum from end to end. The icon is Yayoi Kusama's polka-dot pumpkin — the yellow one on the pier, the red one at the other harbour. There are museums by architect Tadao Ando sunk into the hillsides, and you cycle the island finding artworks scattered along the way.

A rainforest island south of Kagoshima, Japan's first natural World Heritage Site, famous for its giant cedars thousands of years old (Jomon Sugi is said to be ~7,000 years old) and the moss-blanketed forest at Shiratani Unsuikyo — the inspiration for the forest scenes in Studio Ghibli's "Princess Mononoke." It rains often, but that's exactly what keeps the forest so intensely green.