TravelTips24 : Asia : East Asia : Japan : Honshu : Chubu

Chubu

Check the new Chubu travel forum

Chūbu (中部) is the central region of Japan's Honshu island.

Prefectures

The prefectures of the Chubu region are often further divided into three groups.

Tōkai (東海), the southern Pacific coast:

Hokuriku (北陸), the northern Sea of Japan coast:

Kōshin'etsu (甲信越), the rest:

Cities

Other destinations

  • Gero Onsen - one of Japan's Three Famous Hot Springs
  • Japan Alps - the largest and tallest mountain chain in Japan
  • Mount Fuji - the iconic Japanese mountain
  • Oku-Hida Onsen Villages - 5 remote hamlets full of stunning scenery and some of Japan's best hot springs
  • Ono - historic castle town in Fukui prefecture
  • Sado Island - place of exile home to gold mines and the yearly Earth Celebration
  • Sekigahara - the site of the famous battle that ushered in the Tokugawa Shogunate
  • Yuzawa - popular ski and hot spring resort

Culture and History

Chubu means "middle region", accurately reflecting its position straddling the two Japanese poles of Kansai and Kanto. Often ignored by foreign tourists, many of Chubu's best attractions are in the mountains, particularly the Mount Fuji and the Japanese Alps.

Talk

There are many people who speak in dialect in this area. In Shirone in Niigata prefecture, people speak in a dialect. For example, they use the word "Ra, Ri, Ru, Re and Ro " at the ending. So they speak like this, "～raro!".

Travel to Chubu & Visa Requirements

Flights and airtickets to Chubu

Chubu Centrair International Airport, Japan's third major international gateway, is located on an artificial island 30 minutes south from Nagoya. Most larger cities around the region have airports, but they generally only serve domestic flights.

By train

True to the name, the Tokaido Shinkansen bisects the southern Tokai region, connecting to Tokyo in the east and Osaka and Kyoto in the west. Access to the northern parts is harder: Nagano can be reached from Tokyo on the Nagano Shinkansen, but the Hokuriku Shinkansen onward to Kanazawa remains under construction.

Tours & Getting around Chubu

Chubu attractions and sightseeing

  • In the Oku-Hida region around Takayama, check out the traditional gasshō-zukuri houses, with a roof shaped like hands in prayer to protect against snow from accumulating.
  • There are many famous temples in Nagano, notably Zenkōji, considered an official national treasure.
  • In Nagoya, there is Nagoya castle, although it's just a modern concrete reconstruction.

Chubu city tours

  • Winter sports - in the winter, cold, dry air from the Asian continent meets moist Pacific air, the result is a large amount of snow that falls in the Koshin'etsu district, also known as Snow Country (雪国 Yukiguni), since it receives some of the heaviest snowfall in Japan. This makes Chubu Japan's undisputed winter sports capital with attractions like Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics, and Yuzawa, easily reached from Tokyo.
  • Hiking - the Japan Alps have some great hiking. Mount Fuji in Shizuoka is a symbol of Japan and a popular tourist attraction, both for viewing and climbing.

Chubu Restaurants: cheap, moderate and expensive

Chubu's regions all have their local specialities. Some include:

  • Hotaru ika (lit. "firefly squid") in Toyama
  • Hatchō miso (八丁味噌) in Okazaki

Chubu nightlife, bars, clubs & pubs

Chubu is sake country and Niigata, renowned for its koshihikari rice, produces some of the best in the country including famous labels like Kubota (久保田), Koshinokanbai (越乃寒梅) and Hakkaisan (八海山).

Shizuoka is famous for green tea and Aichi specializes in, oddly enough, oranges.

Destinations in Chubu:

Aichi / Chubu Centrair International Airport / Fukui (prefecture) / Gifu (prefecture) / Hakusan National Park / Ishikawa / Japan Alps / Nagano (prefecture) / Niigata (prefecture) / Shizuoka (prefecture) / Toyama (prefecture) / Yamanashi /

Didn't find what you were looking for.
Ask for help at the Chubu travel forum

This page was last edited at 19:04, on 9 July 2008 by Wikitravel user Episteme. Based on work by Jani Patokallio, Darren Kirby, Evan Prodromou and Brian Kurkoski, Wikitravel user(s) Texugo, InterLangBot and Nzpcmad and Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel.

Content on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 license