Chiba's Eastern Cape: Choshi's Nostalgic Railway, Soy Sauce & Inubosaki Lighthouse — 2 Days

The Choshi Electric Railway is a 6.4-kilometre single-track line of vintage carriages that trundles from Choshi station out across cabbage fields to the cape at Tokawa. Chronically short of money, it has survived by ingenuity and affection — most famously by selling 'nure-senbei', soft wet soy-sauce rice crackers, and even fan merchandise, to keep the trains running. Riding it is the classic Choshi experience: the rattling old cars, the tiny wooden stations and the sudden glimpses of sea make the journey, not just the destination.

One-day pass about ¥700 adult (approx., 2026); confirmed running 2025-2026. Boards at Choshi station. Allow about 45 minutes for a ride out and back.

Choshi's warm, humid sea air has made it a great soy-sauce town for centuries, and Yamasa has brewed here since the 1600s, today one of Japan's largest makers. The free factory visit explains how soybeans, wheat and salt become shoyu through long fermentation, with displays, the brewery smell in the air, and usually a small tasting and a hot serving of fresh soy-sauce-flavoured soft-serve at the end. The walk-through gives a real sense of an industry that quietly seasons the whole country.

Free; reservation required, currently a video-based visit, closed Sundays. The visitor centre is near Choshi station. Allow about 45 minutes.

Choshi lands among the largest hauls of any fishing port in Japan, and Wosse 21, a market-and-restaurant complex by the harbour, is the easiest way to eat the result. The market floor sells the morning's fish, dried goods and souvenirs; upstairs and alongside, restaurants serve generous kaisendon piled with whatever came in — tuna, sardine, the prized local kinmedai — at honest port prices. It is busy, unglamorous and exactly where you want to eat in a working fishing city.

Kaisendon roughly ¥1,800-2,500 (approx., 2026); market and restaurants by the harbour. Allow about an hour.

Joined to the fish market by a sky-bridge, the 57-metre Choshi Port Tower gives you the whole layout of the cape in one stop. From the glass observation floors you look down on the fishing harbour and its boats, out along the coast toward Inubosaki, over the mouth of the Tone River and across the patchwork of cabbage fields inland. It is a quick, cheap orientation that helps the rest of the trip make sense, especially the relationship of port, river and cape.

About ¥420 adult (approx., 2026); combo ticket with the Globe Observatory available. By the harbour, next to Wosse 21. Allow about 40 minutes.

Out on the cape, the Inubosaki Hotel sits right above the Pacific, with hot-spring baths drawing on ancient 'fossil seawater' and rooms and an open-air bath facing the open ocean. Its great selling point is the sunrise: because this is the easternmost cape of mainland Kanto, you can watch the sun come straight up out of the sea from the bath or your window. It is a comfortable seaside onsen hotel rather than a luxury resort, and the location — first light over the Pacific — is the reason to stay.

Oceanfront onsen hotel; dinner-and-breakfast plans roughly ¥15,000-25,000 per person (approx., 2026). On Inubosaki cape. Comfortable, not luxury; book ahead for sunrise dates.

The white brick lighthouse at Inubosaki, first lit in 1874 and built of nearly twenty thousand locally fired bricks, marks the easternmost cape of mainland Kanto. You can climb its spiral stair to the gallery for a sweeping view of the Pacific, the rocky shore and the waves breaking below; a small museum at the base explains its Meiji-era construction. Because the sun rises here earlier than almost anywhere else on the main islands, the cape is one of Japan's most popular spots for the ceremonial first sunrise of the new year.

About ¥300 to climb (approx., 2026). On Inubosaki cape, near your hotel. Allow about 45 minutes.

On the highest hill in Choshi, this small observatory hall is built around a single striking idea: from its 360-degree rooftop deck, with sea on three sides and flat plain on the fourth, the horizon is far enough and unbroken enough that you can actually perceive the curvature of the earth. On a clear day you see the Pacific, the Kashima coast, the Byobugaura cliffs and inland to Mount Tsukuba. It is a simple, memorable stop, especially at sunrise or sunset, and an unusual way to feel the scale of the place.

About ¥420 adult, or a combo with the Port Tower roughly ¥1,000 (approx., 2026). On the Atago-yama hill. Allow about 45 minutes.

Running south-west from Choshi, the Byobugaura cliffs are a wall of layered sedimentary rock standing up to fifty metres above the sea for roughly ten kilometres — a stark, banded face that earned the nickname 'the Dover of the East'. A paved promenade runs along the base from the Choshi Marina, letting you walk beneath the strata with the surf on one side and the cliff towering on the other. The clifftop itself is private farmland, so the experience is from below, looking up — best in the clear, raking light of morning.

Free; base promenade from the Choshi Marina (about 2 km walkable), no clifftop access. Windy. Allow about 45 minutes.

For a last taste of Choshi's sea, Ichiyama Ikesu is a large seafood restaurant built around live tanks, where you choose fish swimming in the central pool and have them prepared as sashimi, simmered or grilled. The prized local kinmedai (golden-eye snapper) is the speciality, along with whatever the boats brought in. It is a more sit-down, occasion-style lunch than the market — generous, fresh and a fitting finish to two days at the easternmost cape before the train back.

Sashimi and sets roughly ¥2,000-4,000 (approx., 2026); reserve for groups. Near the harbour. Allow about an hour.