Yokkaichi Japan Mie
Frequently Asked Questions
At the Kasumigaura quays or pier number 3, in an unapologetically industrial setting: cranes, tanks and chimneys make up one of Japan's major industrial complexes. A shuttle or a short taxi ride reaches the city's stations.
Two directions set spirituality against the metropolis. To the south, Ise-Jingu, an hour away by train, needs a good half-day round trip. To the north, Nagoya is about thirty minutes by express train. You have to choose: both will not fit into one day.
The clay used for kyusu, those small side-handled teapots of purple earthenware said to soften the bitterness of green tea. Nearly four out of five Japanese teapots are made here. A pavilion in town is devoted to them, sometimes with short throwing demonstrations.
It is the most sacred shrine in Shinto, about an hour by train to the south. Past the Uji bridge, gravel avenues run beneath immense cedars to pale wooden pavilions, rebuilt identically every twenty years under a thousand-year-old rite.
Restraint. The emotion comes less from the buildings, deliberately plain, than from the light filtered through the forest and the respectful silence of the pilgrims. Anyone looking for gilding and statues will be thrown.
Just outside the shrine, this merchant street of wooden houses has served tea, oysters and akafuku for centuries, those mochi coated in red bean paste eaten while still warm.
Yes, about thirty minutes by express train. The castle crowned with golden dolphins, Atsuta Shrine housing one of the imperial treasures and the shopping districts around the station make a concentrated dose of big-city Japan, doable in a well-planned half-day.
Grilled eel served three ways, a specialty locals discuss with amusing gravity. It is the dish food lovers associate with the city.
It has its admirers: the night-time illumination of the factories draws photographers and dedicated local cruises. In the evening, the flare stacks and strings of refinery lights reflect in the black water of Ise Bay.
The city was the forty-third post station on the Tokaido road, the route travellers took between Kyoto and Edo. It has kept that crossroads role: express trains leave in every direction, which explains the range of excursions available from so understated a town.
