Twenty minutes by train, and three separate reasons to go: Oda Nobunaga's castle on Mount Kinka, reached by ropeway for a view over the whole Nobi plain; the Gifu Great Buddha at Shoho-ji, the largest dry-lacquer Buddha in Japan; and the Nagara river, where cormorant fishing has been practised for 1,300 years. The castle and the Buddha are year-round.