Northern Saitama: Ancient Burial Mounds, a 'Floating Castle' & the Father of Japanese Capitalism — 2 Days

On the plain at Gyoda stand nine of the largest ancient burial mounds in eastern Japan, raised for local rulers between roughly the 5th and 7th centuries — vast keyhole-shaped and round earthworks now grassed over in a spacious park. You can climb Maruhakayama, the biggest round mound, for a view across the group, and walk among tombs that predate written Japanese history. It is open, free and quietly astonishing: a major archaeological site you can largely have to yourself.

Open, free, any time. In Gyoda, a bus or cycle from Gyoda / Gyoda-shi stations. Allow about 1.5 hours with the museum.

Beside the mounds, this prefectural museum displays the treasures excavated from them — above all the Inariyama Sword, a 5th-century iron blade inlaid in gold with 115 characters naming a great king, a discovery so important it is a designated National Treasure and helped rewrite the chronology of early Japan. Armour, horse trappings, beads and haniwa figures fill out the picture of the powerful clan that built the tombs. It is small, well presented and gives the grassy mounds outside their full weight.

Modest admission; closed Mondays. The actual gold-inlaid sword's display schedule can vary — re-confirm if it is your main reason to visit. Allow about 50 minutes.

Gyoda's beloved soul food is the oddly named 'zelly fry' (zerii furai) — a flat, crumbed patty of mashed potato and okara, deep-fried and dipped in a thin Worcestershire-style sauce; there is no jelly and no breading in the English sense, just a cheap, savoury local snack with a history in the tabi-factory workers' lunches. Kanetsuki-dō, a simple rest-stop near Oshi Castle, is the classic place to try it, alongside furai pancakes. Quick, cheap and entirely of this town.

Very cheap; closed Mondays; no reservations. Near Oshi Castle. Allow about 40 minutes.

Oshi Castle is famous as the 'floating castle' that would not sink: in 1590, when one of Hideyoshi's generals tried to take it by damming a river to flood the defenders out, the castle held above the water and never fell to the assault — a story later popularised by the novel and film 'The Floating Castle'. The grounds are open and free; the reconstructed three-tiered turret houses the Gyoda City Museum, which tells the siege and the town's tabi-making history, with an observation room up top. A satisfying, very local castle.

Grounds free; museum/turret modest admission, closed Mondays. In central Gyoda. Allow about an hour.

This Gyoda park is built around an ancient strain of lotus whose two-thousand-year-old seeds germinated spontaneously on the site — a sea of pink blooms that open in the early summer mornings. A 50-metre observation tower gives a view over the lotus and, from a vantage that has held Guinness records, over the town's famous tanbo (rice-paddy) art, where coloured rice varieties are planted to form a giant picture visible only from above. Both the lotus and the paddy art are seasonal, peaking roughly late June through summer.

Park free; tower roughly ¥400. Ancient lotus blooms roughly late June-early August (mornings); rice-paddy art from early August. Allow about 75 minutes in season.

Shibusawa Eiichi, born in Fukaya in 1840, founded or helped found hundreds of Japanese companies — the first modern bank, the stock exchange, breweries, railways and more — and is widely called the father of Japanese capitalism; he is also the face of the redesigned 10,000-yen note. This memorial museum tells his life and his ideas about ethical business and public good, with documents, belongings and a robot lecture. It is the anchor for understanding why this quiet farming town matters to modern Japan.

Open, free; advance reservation required. In Fukaya, taxi from the station. Allow about 50 minutes.

A short distance from the museum stands Nakanchi, the Shibusawa family home where Eiichi was born and raised — a substantial Meiji-era farmhouse compound, rebuilt by the family in the 1890s, with the main house, storehouses and garden preserved. Walking the rooms and yard where a farmer's son who became modern Japan's great organiser of capital grew up grounds the whole story in a real, modest place; an android of the elderly Shibusawa sometimes greets visitors.

Open; taxi access from Fukaya Station. Near the memorial museum. Allow about 40 minutes.

Fukaya Station's main building is a striking red-brick structure modelled on the facade of Tokyo Station — a fitting tribute, because the bricks for Tokyo Station were made here, at the brick company Shibusawa Eiichi founded in Fukaya in 1887. The town's brick heritage is woven through its streets, and the station makes a neat, photogenic close to the day: the industrialist's legacy literally built into the building you leave from. A free, five-minute photo stop before the train back.

Active station, free to view. In central Fukaya. Allow about 20 minutes.