The Japanese region that hopes to tempt travellers from the Golden Route
Toyama prefecture, in Japan’s Hokuriku region, combines natural beauty and craft culture with commitments to sustainable and regenerative tourism to persuade travellers away from the classic Tokyo to Kyoto itinerary.
The distinctive “prayer hands” houses of Gokayama Village are bathed in blue twilight, their thatched roofs swathed in the deep, deep snow that characterises winter in the heart of Japan’s Northern Alps. Encircling the 350-year-old houses of this remarkable Unesco World Heritage Site are 3,000-metre-high peaks, a majestic and spiritual landscape that lies at the heart of Toyama Prefecture – “a hidden gem of a destination’” in the words of its vice-governor, Mika Yokota.
Yokota is taking a room of 30 travel trade professionals with her on a colourful virtual journey to Toyama, from the white-washed lecture hall of Japan House London. The seminar and subsequent networking event is part of Toyama Week in London (31 October – 5 November), a programme of trade and consumer activations from Toyama Prefectural Government. A rural prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, Toyama hopes to tap into the wealth of agents handling tailor-made tours for high-end clients and also to utilise London’s status as a global centre to promote Toyama’s appeal in other markets.
With a flick of a screen, Yokota transports the seminar – which includes representatives from Audley Travel, InsideJapan Tours, Into Japan and Japan Experience, as well as All Nippon Airlines and Japan Airlines – from the mountains to sea level, to Toyama Bay. In between lies the expansive Tonami Plain, a distinct landscape of rice paddies and ‘dispersed settlements’ (traditional agrarian homesteads) that serve as the region’s breadbasket.
Then it’s back into the mountains to one of Toyama’s best-known attractions: the Yukino-Otani, a 20-metre-high snow corridor carved each spring through the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, a scenic trail through the Northern Alps that is traversed by trains, buses and cable cars.
An image of Yokota herself appears, standing white-robed beneath a tumbling waterfall, immersed in the experience of takigyo – Japanese waterfall meditation. Spirituality, she explains, is a key tenet of life in Toyama and there are ample opportunities for visitors to experience it through activities such as takigyo, temple visits and shakyo (meditative sutra copying), all newly accessible to overseas travellers.
“Toyama is not yet well known as a destination but it retains not only its magnificent nature and food but also its traditional culture, craftsmanship and other aspects of authentic Japan that luxury European and American travellers seek when they say they want to experience the ‘real Japan’,” explains Sari Hayashiguchi, from West Toyama DMC Mizu to Takumi.
Hayashiguchi takes the podium to unveil one- and two-night sample itineraries, on the Toyama coast and in rural towns and villages, featuring craft workshops, farm walking tours, taiko drum practice and fishing boat trips, all of which emphasise the opportunity for connection with local people.
A highlight of the new accommodation available is a 150-year-old country farmhouse (surrounded by paddy fields in one of the scattered villages) that has been newly renovated into a three-bedroom art hotel filled with Japanese mingei (folk craft) and contemporary Japanese and Nordic furniture. Named Rakudo-An, it is a base for regenerative tourism in the area: its restaurant uses ingredients from local fishermen and farmers, and two per cent of its accommodation fees are donated to a fund coordinating conservation activities in the village.
Attendee Tim Grisbrooke-Campbell, Japan product executive for InsideJapan Tours is impressed. “We have looked at Toyama in the past but now we feel they have some really good product together and that the time is right,’ he explains, referring to the March extension of the Hokuriku shinkansen that is expected to throw a renewed spotlight on the region. (The current bullet train route from Tokyo – which reaches Toyama in just two hours and 10 minutes – will gain a new terminus in Tsuruga, south of Kanazawa on the Sea of Japan coast.)
Rural stars
“Toyama fits nicely into our ethos of getting our agent partners and customers to less well-known destinations that really give that special experience that Japan is renowned for,” Grisbrooke-Campbell continues. “What’s more, the fact that they are championing rural regeneration is important to us.”
Noteworthy, he says, is the regeneration of Toyama City’s historic Iwase district, where former storehouses and old buildings on the seafront have been restored and renovated by a 5th-generation local sake brewer. Many are now home to restaurants, including six that feature in the Michelin guide – including a one- and a two-star restaurant – something “incredible to find in a rural destination barely known outside Japan”.
As a result, InsideJapan is developing a new self-guided itinerary in Toyama that can also be incorporated into any tailored itinerary heading to the Sea of Japan coast and Kanazawa, something they plan to share with agent partners. A member of the Japan-based team will attend a fam trip to Toyama this month (November), as will a representative from Audley Travel.
For high-end specialist Into Japan, the region is already firmly on the roster. “I’ve been aware of Toyama as a location with good products since I went on a fam there last November,’ says its product manager Alia Khalid. ‘I really appreciated how easy it was to get there along the Hokuriku Shinkansen line, the accommodation and level of finish of all the facilities, and the different metal and wood workshops offered,’ she explains. “There’s no shortage of deep countryside in Japan, but it’s rare to find deep countryside with such high-level products and good English support.”
She finds that sending clients to rural areas outside Tokyo and Kyoto can help open up their minds: “Seeing how easy it is to get to Toyama from Tokyo when the two are so different sets a precedent for other ways of exploring Japan. It allows us to design more of the unique and person-engaging trips that aren’t afforded by trips that are limited to Tokyo and Kyoto.”
At the end of Toyama Week in London, Sari Hayashiguchi reflects on the encouraging response from the trade: “Product managers and agents are looking for destinations other than Tokyo, Kyoto/Osaka and Mt Fuji and, in that context, Toyama’s nature, food, hot springs, culture, old townscapes, craftsmanship and humble local people, may have helped them recognise it as a hidden gem. We are confident Toyama will be a destination that satisfies well-travelled British clients who are seeking to explore Japan on a deeper level.”
- For information about travel in Toyama see visit-toyama-japan.com/en, or contact Toyama’s UK representative, Kylie Clark at kylie@wondertrunk.co
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