11 spots โ sorted by traveller rating
Perched above a dramatic river gorge carved through volcanic rock, Yamanaka Onsen was famously praised by the haiku master Matsuo Basho on his journey through Japan and is still considered one of the three great Kaga Onsen. A suspension bridge offers vertiginous views of the Kakusenkei gorge below, while the town's streets offer lacquerware shops, sake breweries, and traditional ryokan with private open-air baths over the rushing water.
This circular glass museum with no defined entrance or front is one of Japan's architectural and artistic landmarks. Its permanent collection includes Leandro Erlich's 'Swimming Pool' (a real pool appearing full of water from above while visitors walk 'underwater' below) and James Turrell's luminous sky spaces โ contemporary art that invites direct physical engagement.
The workshops clustered around Kanazawa's Higashi Chaya district offer hands-on sessions where visitors learn to apply real gold leaf to ceramics, lacquerware, chopsticks, or frames โ a surprisingly meditative craft that reveals why Kanazawa goldsmiths have dominated Japan's gold leaf industry for four centuries. A finished piece makes for one of the most distinctive and lightweight souvenirs you can carry home from Japan.
Yamashiro Onsen is one of Japan's oldest hot spring resorts, with 1,300 years of history and a refined atmosphere built around grand ryokan, a beautiful public bathhouse, and the tradition of tea ceremony in tranquil garden settings. The milky-white sulfurous waters are renowned for skin-softening properties, and the elegant main street of preserved Meiji-era buildings creates one of the most atmospheric onsen towns in Japan.
The largest and best-preserved Edo-period geisha quarter outside Kyoto, Higashi Chaya's lattice-fronted ochaya teahouses line narrow cobblestone lanes almost unchanged since the 1820s. Visitors can sip gold-leaf-dusted coffee, browse lacquerware shops, and on lucky evenings hear the pluck of shamisen drifting from behind paper screens.
Designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning firm SANAA, this striking circular glass building has a freely accessible outer ring that draws locals and tourists alike even without a ticket. The museum's most iconic installation is Leandro Erlich's swimming pool illusion โ viewed from above you see people standing beneath rippling water, and from below you look up through the surface.
Chirihama Beach on the western Noto coast is one of the very few places in the world where you can legally drive a vehicle along a public road that runs directly on the beach โ eight kilometres of hard-packed sand at low tide with the grey-green Sea of Japan on one side and pine trees on the other. The spectacle of cars, motorcycles, and even buses rolling along the tideline makes this one of Ishikawa's most memorable experiences.
Wajima-nuri is widely regarded as the finest urushi lacquerware in Japan, produced through a painstaking 124-step process that creates pieces of extraordinary depth, lustre, and durability. Visitors can tour the Wajima Lacquerware Museum or join hands-on workshops where artisans guide you through applying layers of lacquer, practicing the techniques that have been refined on the Noto Peninsula for over 600 years.
Kanazawa produces an astonishing 99 percent of all gold leaf made in Japan, and the city celebrates this heritage by applying it to almost everything edible โ soft-serve ice cream cloaked in shimmering sheets, matcha lattes with floating gold, sake bottles glazed in gold, and kaiseki dishes garnished with edible leaf. The Higashi Chaya district is the best place to taste your way through the gold leaf tradition.
Dedicated cycling routes thread through Noto Peninsula's UNESCO-designated satoyama landscape, passing terraced rice fields, traditional farmhouses, coastal fishing hamlets, and ancient cedar groves at a pace that lets you absorb the extraordinary quietness of rural Japan. Several routes link to shuttle services that handle luggage, making multi-day cycling tours accessible even for casual riders.
Yanagida in inland Noto is one of the finest surviving examples of satoyama โ the traditional Japanese cultural landscape of village, farmland, secondary woodland, and stream managed in harmony for centuries. In early summer the valleys fill with fireflies, and the terraced fields and thatched barns create a vision of rural Japan that feels entirely removed from the modern world.
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