Manga Pilgrimage Tottori: Detective Conan Town, Lake Togo & the Yokai Road of Sakaiminato — 2 Days

Hokuei is the hometown of Gosho Aoyama, creator of 'Detective Conan' (Case Closed), one of the best-selling manga in history, and the Gosho Aoyama Manga Factory is the museum devoted to him and his work. Inside are original drawings and manuscripts, a recreation of his studio, interactive detective gadgets and tricks straight from the series, and displays tracing his career from his Tottori childhood onward, all pitched to delight both serious fans and children. For families travelling with young Conan readers it is the heart of the trip; even casual visitors enjoy the puzzles and the sheer scale of the franchise on show.

Admission about ¥700 adult (approx., 2025); hours roughly 09:30-17:30 (to 17:00 in winter), closed Tuesdays and around New Year. In Hokuei, near JR Yura (Conan) Station. Allow about 90 minutes.

Between JR Yura Station — officially nicknamed 'Conan Station' — and the Manga Factory runs the Conan Street, a roughly one-and-a-half-kilometre stretch dotted with bronze statues of Conan and the series' characters, themed bridges, detective-shaped silhouettes and shops selling Conan goods, with a giant Conan figure greeting arrivals at the station. It is an open-air, free-to-walk treasure hunt for fans, who pose with each statue along the way, and the small town leans cheerfully into its most famous son. Walking part of it between station and museum, with a lunch stop at one of the themed cafes, fills the early afternoon.

Free to walk; cafes and shops have their own hours. Between Yura Station and the Manga Factory in Hokuei. Allow about 60 minutes including a lunch stop.

On the shore of Lake Togo, a brackish lagoon where hot springs bubble up through the lakebed, Hawai Onsen is a small hot-spring resort, and Bourou Togetsu is its landmark inn — open since 1931 and famous for an open-air bath built out over the water itself, the only lake-floating bath of its kind in Japan, where you soak with the lake lapping at the rail and the sunset spreading across the surface. Rooms look out over the water, dinner draws on the lake and the nearby Sea of Japan, and the setting is gentle and scenic rather than grand — a memorable, photogenic night that children and adults both enjoy after a day of statues.

A historic lakeside onsen ryokan with a lake-floating open-air bath; rates vary by room and season, typically with dinner and breakfast (approx., 2026). On Lake Togo in Hawai Onsen, Yurihama, about 25 minutes from Hokuei. The day's final stop and overnight.

Sakaiminato is the hometown of Shigeru Mizuki, the manga master whose 'GeGeGe no Kitaro' brought Japan's folklore monsters, the yokai, back into popular imagination, and the town has turned its main street into a shrine to them. From the station, the eight-hundred-metre Mizuki Shigeru Road is lined with more than 170 bronze statues of yokai — the one-eyed Kitaro, the cloth-monster Ittan-momen, hundreds of weird and wonderful spirits — set into the pavement and shopfronts, with yokai-themed sweets, stamps and lanterns that glow after dark. It is free, endlessly browsable and genuinely magical for children, the whole street a walk-through manga.

Free, always open; evening yokai lighting from sunset to about 22:00. From JR Sakaiminato Station, about an hour west of Hawai Onsen. Allow about 90 minutes.

At the far end of the yokai road stands the Mizuki Shigeru Memorial Museum, completely rebuilt and reopened in spring 2024 in a larger building that does justice to the breadth of the artist's life and work. The exhibits move from his Sakaiminato childhood and his experiences as a soldier in the war — which he lost an arm to and which marked his work deeply — to the creation of Kitaro and his lifelong cataloguing of yokai, with original art, a recreated workspace and immersive yokai rooms. It is the substantial, story-telling counterpart to the playful street outside, and rewards an unhurried hour.

Admission about ¥1,000 adult (approx., 2025, rebuilt 2024); hours roughly 09:30-18:00, last entry 17:30, open daily. At the end of Mizuki Shigeru Road. Allow about 60 minutes.

Sakaiminato is one of the busiest fishing ports on the Sea of Japan, and at its waterfront direct-sales centre the day's catch is sold straight from the boats and cooked to order at market eateries. In winter the prize is snow crab — both the high-grade matsuba and the more affordable beni-zuwai, sometimes served all-you-can-eat — while the rest of the year brings tuna, squid, mackerel and shellfish in bowls and grills. Eating crab or a heaped seafood bowl among the fish stalls is the right, salt-air lunch for a port town, and a counterpoint to the morning's manga whimsy.

Bowls and crab sets roughly ¥1,500-4,000 depending on season (approx., 2026); market hours generally daytime, confirm the weekly closed day (matsuba crab winter only). On the Sakaiminato waterfront. Allow about 60 minutes.

A short way along the waterfront, the Sea and Life Museum occupies an old sake warehouse and tells the story of Sakaiminato's relationship with the sea, with a collection of marine specimens that is its real draw: hundreds of preserved fish and sea creatures, including a giant taxidermied great white shark that children remember long afterward. Displays cover the fishing industry, traditional gear and the marine life of the Sea of Japan, an informative and slightly old-fashioned museum that rounds out a day on the coast. It is a calm, indoor finish, easy with tired children, before the drive on.

Admission about ¥410 adult, less for overseas visitors and children (approx., 2025); hours roughly 09:30-17:00, confirm the weekly closed day. On the Sakaiminato waterfront. Allow about 60 minutes.