14 Places To Visit In Okayama

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Day Trip (3)
Temple (2)
Buddhist Temple (2)
Museum (2)

1. Okayama Korakuen

2 km from city center

Garden & Park

One of the three great gardens of Japan, laid out from 1700 for the Ikeda lords and unusual for the amount of open lawn, tea plantation and working rice field inside it. Across the river the black keep of Okayama Castle sits in the view on purpose. A combined ticket for both is 720 yen against 500 for the garden alone, which makes doing them together the obvious choice. Open every day of the year.

Top Attraction

2 km from city center

Forts & Palaces

Black lacquered boards on every outer wall gave it the name Crow Castle, in deliberate contrast to the white keeps elsewhere. The original burned in 1945 and this is a 1966 rebuild, reopened after a major refit with a modern interior museum. Note that Matsumoto Castle also goes by Crow Castle, so searches mix them up. Admission 400 yen; older guides say 320.

Top Attraction

15 km from city center

Day Trip

Fifteen minutes by train to a canal lined with willows and white-walled merchant storehouses, preserved because the town was a rice depot under direct shogunal control. The Ohara Museum here was the first in Japan to collect Western art and holds El Greco, Monet and Gauguin; admission has risen to 2,000 yen. Rowing boats run on the canal. The easiest and best day trip in the prefecture.

7 km from city center

Temple

The only building in Japan in the kibitsu-zukuri style, a National Treasure rebuilt in 1425 with twin gables over a single vast roof. From it a roofed wooden corridor runs 400 metres down the hillside. The shrine is tied to the Momotaro legend, which began here as a story about a demon the local prince defeated. Do not confuse it with the Kibitsu Shrine in Fukuyama.

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5. Kibi Plain Cycling Route

8 km from city center

Cycling

Seventeen kilometres of flat, dedicated cycle path between Bizen-Ichinomiya and Soja stations, running past shrines, burial mounds and a pagoda standing alone in the rice fields. The route is the experience rather than any one stop on it. Bikes are 1,500 yen for the day, and there is a further 500 yen charge to drop off at the far end, which guides routinely omit.

11 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

A 34 metre five-storied pagoda standing by itself in open farmland, part of a provincial temple founded in 741. There is nothing around it, which is the point: it rises straight out of the fields and it is the picture everyone comes away with from the Kibi Plain. Free, and it sits directly on the cycling route.

7. Day Trip to Naoshima

23 km from city center

Day Trip

An island given over to contemporary art, with Ando's Chichu Art Museum cut into the hill, Benesse House above the sea and Kusama's yellow pumpkin on the jetty. From Okayama you go via Uno Port, which is the most used gateway of the two and about an hour away. Book Chichu with a timed slot in advance; bags and cameras are not allowed inside and go into lockers.

32 km from city center

Day Trip

The highest castle in Japan at 430 metres, and one of only twelve with an original keep still standing. On autumn mornings the valley below fills with cloud and the castle appears to float on it, viewed from a purpose-built platform across the gorge. About an hour from Okayama to Bitchu-Takahashi, then a bus and a walk. Not the Matsuyama Castle in Ehime, which is a different place entirely.

6 km from city center

Temple

The chief shrine of old Bizen province, at the foot of sacred Mount Naka, with one of the largest stone lanterns in Japan standing on its approach. It sits beside Bizen-Ichinomiya station at the eastern end of the Kibi cycling route, so it is where most people start or finish the ride. Free, and quieter than Kibitsu two kilometres away, which it is easily confused with.

9 km from city center

Historical Site

A keyhole-shaped burial mound 350 metres long, built in the fifth century and among the largest in Japan. What makes it worth stopping for rather than reading about is that you are allowed to walk up onto it, which is rare: the biggest mounds elsewhere are imperial property and fenced off. Free, unstaffed, and directly on the Kibi Plain route.

2 km from city center

Museum

The Ikeda family's own collection, kept when the domain was dissolved: Noh costumes and masks, armour, swords, lacquer, tea ceramics and painted screens, shown in rotation in a small building with its own garden beside the castle. It is the daimyo half of the story that the castle keep itself, being a modern rebuild, cannot tell.

2 km from city center

Art Gallery

The main art institution in the Culture Zone between the castle and Korakuen, built around artists connected to the province: the ink painter Sesshu, who was born here, alongside Bizen pottery and Ukita-period work. A straightforward, well-lit collection that takes an hour and fills the gap between the two big outdoor sights.

2 km from city center

Museum

Assyrian wall reliefs, Mesopotamian cuneiform, Persian glass and Syrian mosaics, in a modernist building of stone and water a few minutes from the castle. A collection of the ancient Near East is a genuinely odd thing to find in a Japanese regional city, and that is exactly why it is worth an hour when the weather turns.

10 km from city center

Buddhist Temple

A temple east of the centre, quiet for most of the year, that hosts the Hadaka Matsuri each February: thousands of men in loincloths competing for a pair of sacred wooden sticks thrown into the crowd at midnight. It is counted among Japan's three great unusual festivals. Outside that night the grounds are calm and free, with an old pagoda and a river gate.