First-Time Chiba: The Narita Pilgrim Temple & Sawara's 'Little Edo' Canal Town — 2 Days

Founded in 940 around an image of Fudo Myo-o said to have been carved by the master Kukai, Shinshoji is the head temple of the Chisan branch of Shingon Buddhism and among the most visited temples in Japan. Its great draw is the goma fire ritual, performed several times daily in the main hall: priests chant as wooden prayer sticks are fed to a roaring fire to burn away worldly desires. Beyond the ceremony the precinct is a layered hillside of halls spanning centuries, including a vivid three-storey pagoda from 1712 and an Edo-period gate, well worth an unhurried climb.

Grounds open and free; goma ceremonies several times daily (schedule posted at the main hall). About a 10-minute walk from JR/Keisei Narita stations. Allow about 75 minutes.

Behind the main hall spreads Naritasan Park, a 165,000-square-metre landscape garden of ponds, streams, calligraphy monuments and wooded walking paths that most day-trippers never reach. It is a quiet counterweight to the busy temple front — plum in late winter, fresh green in spring, and one of the Kanto's better maple displays in November. A short loop gives you the temple's calmer back face and a view down over its roofs.

Open and free, any time. Directly behind the main hall. Allow about 45 minutes for a loop.

The Omotesando is the roughly 800-metre approach that has carried pilgrims between Narita station and the temple gate for centuries. It curves gently downhill past wooden townhouses, pickle shops, sweet-sellers and dozens of eel restaurants whose open frontages let you watch the fish being filleted and grilled. Walk it slowly: the street itself, with its Edo and Meiji facades, is part of the pilgrimage, and the smell of grilling eel over sweet tare sauce hangs over the whole lane.

Open street, free; shops roughly 09:00-17:00. Between Narita station and the temple. Allow 30 minutes to stroll.

Grilled freshwater eel is Narita's pilgrim dish, and Kawatoyo, in a registered cultural-property building on the approach since 1910, is its most famous house. Eels are filleted, skewered and charcoal-grilled in the open storefront, then steamed and finished over a generations-old tare sauce and served as una-ju over rice in lacquer boxes. It is the classic Omotesando lunch — mid-priced and deservedly busy, so come early; the shop takes a queue rather than reservations.

Open roughly 10:00-17:00; una-ju about ¥3,000-4,000 (approx., 2026). No reservations — queue, busiest at midday. On the Omotesando. Allow about 75 minutes including the wait.

Rather than commute back to Tokyo, transfer across the plain to Sawara and stay in the canal town itself. NIPPONIA Sawara is an 'albergo diffuso' — a dispersed hotel of guest rooms set inside several restored Edo and Meiji merchant buildings around the historic district, with a reception building and an on-site restaurant. Staying over lets you see the canal at dusk and early morning, emptied of day-trippers — the Sawara most visitors never experience. Rooms are few; book well ahead.

Dispersed historic-building hotel with on-site restaurant; small inventory, book well ahead. Reception is in the Sawara district. About an hour from Narita.

Sawara grew rich shipping rice and sake down the Tone River system to old Edo, and the wealth built the canal townscape that survives along the Ono River — willow-draped stone embankments, arched bridges, and black-plastered storehouses and shopfronts, many still run as the family businesses they always were. It is Chiba's only nationally designated Important Preservation District, and because the buildings are lived-in rather than museum pieces, the street has a working, unpolished charm. Walk both banks slowly and look at the old signboards and lattice fronts.

Open streets, free, any time; shops roughly 10:00-17:00. Walkable from your inn. Allow about an hour.

The best view of Sawara is from the water. A small flat-bottomed sappa-bune carries you for about half an hour along the Ono River, gliding under the low bridges while a boatman points out the merchant houses and the old quay where Ino Tadataka once lived. From the canal you see the embankments and storehouses at their original working height, the way goods and people actually moved through the town. It is a gentle, photogenic ride and an easy way to grasp how the place was built around its water.

About ¥1,300 adult (approx., 2026); weather-dependent and reduced in winter — confirm same-day. Boards on the Ono River near the Toyohashi bridge. Allow about 45 minutes including the wait.

Sawara's most famous son is Ino Tadataka, a sake merchant who, after retiring at fifty, walked the coastlines of Japan over seventeen years to produce the first accurate survey maps of the country. This riverside museum holds his original survey instruments, field notebooks and astonishingly precise hand-drawn maps, several designated National Treasures, and tells the story of how one determined man measured a nation on foot. His preserved house stands just across the bridge. It is small, well captioned and genuinely moving.

About ¥500 (approx., 2026); roughly 09:00-16:30, closed Mondays. Beside the Ono River. Allow about 45 minutes.

Kobori-ya has made soba in Sawara since 1782, and its building is a prefecture-designated cultural property in its own right. The house speciality is kuro-kiri soba, a striking near-black noodle made with kombu seaweed worked into the dough, served cold with dipping broth — a dish you will not find made the same way elsewhere. It is a fitting, low-key lunch in the heart of the old district, in a room that has fed canal merchants for well over two centuries.

Lunch roughly 11:00-16:30 until sold out, closed Wednesdays; soba about ¥1,000-1,500 (approx., 2026). In the old district. Allow about an hour.

A few kilometres from Sawara stands Katori Jingu, one of only three shrines that bore the exalted rank of jingu in ancient times, alongside Ise and the nearby Kashima. Dedicated to Futsunushi, a deity of swords and martial valour, it has been a centre of worship for over two millennia and is the head of some four hundred Katori shrines nationwide. You approach through a long avenue of towering cedars to a vermilion-and-black main hall rebuilt in 1700, deep in old forest. After the busy canal it is a hushed, dignified close to the visit.

Open and free; main buildings roughly 08:30-16:30. Limited transit — taxi from Sawara is easiest (about 15 minutes). Allow about an hour.