Gifu

Gifu is a landlocked prefecture in the center of Honshu, rising from the rice plains north of Nagoya into the high Hida mountains. Its river culture and mountain towns kept old Japan alive here, and its most famous spectacle has run on summer nights for some 1,300 years.

That spectacle is ukai, cormorant fishing on the Nagara River, where masters in grass skirts work leashed birds by torchlight below Gifu Castle's mountaintop perch. North lie Takayama, with its dark wooden merchant streets and morning markets, and Shirakawa-go, the UNESCO village of steep thatched farmhouses that photographs best under January snow.

Hida beef and mountain soba fuel the trip, and Gero Onsen adds a hot spring night along the rail line between the sights. Summer is for the river, winter for the snow country. The JR Takayama Line strings the prefecture's highlights together from Nagoya, so no car is needed.