Nagoya

The keep has been closed to visitors since 2018 and can only be seen from outside. What is open instead is the Honmaru palace, rebuilt in timber, its gold-leaf screens back where they were and startlingly bright.

Nineteen hectares of forest in the city centre, quiet but for the cicadas. The tea house inside sells kishimen, and that line forms separately from the one to pray. On the first morning of each month the crowd is visibly bigger.

It grew out of a temple market and now mixes used electronics, vintage clothes and Brazilian kitchens. Because the arcades interlock, an hour's walk never leaves cover. Twice a month an antique market fills the temple yard.

The company made looms before it made cars, which is why half the museum is spinning machinery. Century-old looms are run for real at set times through the day. Closed Mondays.

The planetarium dome is 35 metres across, among the largest anywhere. Tickets are same-day only and usually gone by late morning, and the shows run in Japanese. The minus-30 cold room and the lightning lab admit by session.

The oval roof is a shallow sheet of water you can walk a lap around, and it costs nothing. Lit at night it sits oddly above the bus terminal below, with the TV tower straight ahead.

It shares a block with the Tokugawa Art Museum and sells a combined ticket. A valley and a waterfall are squeezed into a twenty-minute circuit. There are two peaks: irises in early June, maples at the end of November.

A porcelain works turned into a park, its red brick halls and six chimneys left standing. The plate-painting workshop fires your piece and posts it about three weeks later. Walking the park itself is free.

Real trains, from the first shinkansen to the maglev that hit 581 kilometres an hour. The driving simulators are allocated by an on-site draw. It is 24 minutes out, at the Aonami line terminus.

Half an hour out on the Meitetsu line, a town that has tie-dyed shibori for four centuries. Merchant houses still line the old Tokaido road. Dyeing your own handkerchief runs to about thirty minutes.

One of five castles whose original pre-Edo keep survives, and a National Treasure, about 30 minutes from Nagoya on the Meitetsu line. Inside, the wooden stairs are ladder-steep, and the top-floor balcony's low rail makes the Kiso River view dizzying.

Opened in 2022 inside the Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park in Nagakute. There are no rides: its areas rebuild buildings and scenes from Ghibli films at full scale. Tickets are dated and must be bought in advance, with no sales on the day.

The swords, armour and tea utensils handed down in the Owari Tokugawa family, beside Tokugawa-en garden. The National Treasure Tale of Genji scrolls leave storage only briefly each year, so time a visit to match.

Over 60 Meiji-era buildings brought from around Japan to an Inuyama hillside and laid out like a town. Best known is Frank Lloyd Wright's entrance hall from the old Imperial Hotel. A steam train and an old Kyoto streetcar shuttle visitors between zones.

One of the few aquariums in Japan keeping orcas and belugas together. At the dolphin show in the big pool, the first few rows get soaked. It is about 5 minutes on foot from Nagoyako subway station.

A zoo and botanical garden sharing one hill, home to Shabani, the gorilla famous for his good looks. The glass conservatory, built in 1937, is listed as cultural heritage. The hill is large, so allow a full day.

A pottery town right beside Chubu Centrair Airport, its hillside lanes walled with broken shochu jars and clay pipes. It makes many of Japan's maneki-neko, so cat figures line the tops of walls. A good two-hour stop before a flight.