Okayama

A lord's garden completed in 1700, one of Japan's three great gardens. Okayama Castle, across the river, rises behind its wide lawns like a backdrop, and red-crowned cranes kept in an enclosure are let out to stroll the grass on the first day of the year.

Its black board walls earned it the name Crow Castle. The present keep was rebuilt in concrete in 1966 after air raids burned the original, and the Tsukimi bridge from Korakuen's south gate brings you straight to its base.

An old merchant quarter of white-walled, black-tiled storehouses along a willow-lined canal. Trains from Okayama take about 20 minutes. Canal boat tickets go out first come at the tourist office on the day and are usually gone by afternoon.

Opened in 1930 as Japan's first private museum built around Western art. El Greco's Annunciation is the star, and behind the Greek-temple main hall the crafts and Asian art wings carry on, so seeing it all takes half a day.

Its unusual twin-roofed main hall is a National Treasure, and the shrine is tied to the legend behind Momotaro. A roofed corridor 360m long runs through the grounds, and the Narukama rite, reading fortune from a cauldron's hum, needs booking ahead.

A flat bike path from Bizen-Ichinomiya to Soja stations past burial mounds, shrines and paddies. Rent at one station and drop off at the other, and on the way you can climb onto Tsukuriyama, ranked the fourth largest burial mound in Japan.

The home of Bizen ware, fired long in wood kilns without glaze so the marks of the flames become the pattern. Kilns and chimneys run from Inbe station, and on the third weekend of October the pottery festival turns the whole town into a market.

A 133m hill where the Kojima peninsula ends, with the Seto Ohashi bridges striding over the islands to Shikoku straight ahead. Many come at sunset as the bridge is lit up, and with buses sparse most arrive by car or taxi.

Thirty-odd denim shops gathered in Kojima, where the first Japanese-made jeans were sewn in 1965. Jeans hang over the street like washing on a line, and many shops take up hems while you wait, so you can wear a new pair out.

Of the castles with an original Edo keep, this one stands on the highest mountain. From autumn to spring a sea of cloud on early mornings can make it float, but you see that from the cloud-sea lookout on the opposite mountain, not from the castle.

Red-brick halls of the Kurashiki spinning mill, built in 1889 and now a hotel, craft workshops and a memorial gallery, with ivy smothering the walls. It borders the Bikan quarter on its eastern edge, handy after the canal walk; the ivy reddens in autumn.

Set up in 1670 by lord Ikeda Mitsumasa for commoners' children; the lecture hall is designated a National Treasure. The roof is laid with Bizen-ware tiles that glow reddish, and the two pistache trees before the hall blaze red in November. Drive about an hour.

A small harbour town in Setouchi nicknamed Japan's Aegean for its hill of olive groves and a white windmill. Joseon Korean envoy missions called here in the Edo period, and the karako dance said to come from them survives at the local festival.

A mountain village in Takahashi that grew rich on copper mining and bengala red ochre; houses roofed in red tiles with ochre-washed walls line its street. It is a protected preservation district, and with rare buses most people drive the hour and a half.

A museum opened in 2008 in the ruins of an old copper refinery on Inujima, a tiny island belonging to Okayama city; its chimneys, wind and sun drive the air flow inside. Boats from Hoden port take about ten minutes, and Setouchi Triennale works dot the island.

Paintings of willowy beauties and graphic designs by Okayama-born Takehisa Yumeji, a few minutes' stroll across the river from Korakuen. Much of it is Taisho-era magazine covers and bright wrapping-paper patterns, as fun for the design as for the art.