Ridgeline subscribers —

A new year, a new city. My pick for New York Times’ “52 Places to Go 2025” is Toyama City of Toyama Prefecture. It is placed at 30 on this year’s list (not that the list is a “ranking”!) and Osaka — with its forthcoming Expo — is placed at 38. I think that’s quite the interesting contrast of Japanese cities to highlight.

Times picks aren’t entirely willy-nilly. The mandate from editors defines the recommendation parameters; I think it’s worth reading 2025’s editorial query for context:

This year marks our 20th anniversary in publishing a “where to go” list, so we really want to make it special.

As always, the focus should be on “why this year?” In 2024, we had the Paris Olympics and the total solar eclipse in North America as our linchpin destinations (and as an eclipse traveler, I can tell you that it lived up to its #1 billing). What are you excited about this year? Are there significant cultural or natural events that our readers shouldn’t miss?

The word of the summer has been “overtourism,” so in putting together the coming year’s list, please keep that in mind. Are there places we can suggest that might help mitigate the crowds in the most popular destinations?

Beyond that, is there some positive effect going to a particular part of the world might have? Maui and Morocco made last year’s list as places that have suffered recent natural disasters. Are there destinations like them that could benefit from tourist dollars? Are there specific ways to spend those dollars that will do more good?

Can you, at the very least, do less harm? Are there new and interesting places/ways to travel more sustainably that we should be letting our readers know about? Destinations that are really raising the bar on being climate-friendly? Different seasons we might suggest for a visit?

This year we again ask you to think about what themes your suggestions might fall into. So please note if it fits into one or more of these buckets: Family, Adventure, Sustainability, Threatened Places, Culture/Pop Culture, Food, Events, Nature, Relaxation, Season (i.e. Winter/Summer). Or if you have a different bucket to propose, let us know.

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Noto Peninsula

With all this in mind, Toyama City (I’ll just refer to it as Toyama going forward, which is also the name of the Prefecture) felt like a great fit. Noto Peninsula was hit by a massive quake and tsunami on January 1, 2024, and is now recovering. Toyama sits at the eastern edge of the entrance to the Peninsula. It’s quite easy to rent a car in Toyama and head up, which is exactly what I did in October.

I drove some 300 kilometers of the Peninsula, looking to see firsthand how it was faring. Were towns recovering? Did inns long for the return of tourists? The answer was largely: Yes, we’re doing better (in parts), and yes, we’d love for people to start returning.

Some towns were still amidst massive cleanup, but here and there, inns and restaurants were open and hungry for visitors. The roads were largely in decent shape. The main Highway 1 bypass was patched with small diversions (the road had roiled like Indiana Jones’ whip from the quake) making the going slower than usual, but nothing insurmountable. The more beatific costal Highway 249 was almost entirely fine the whole way up and down the eastern side of the Peninsula.

By many accounts, the western edge of the Peninsula is in much worse shape, with cities like Wajima (and their historic morning market) still far from full recovery. Further north, the town of Suzu is apparently still in disarray (I made it about 20 kilometers south of the city but ran out of time to visit the city itself). The focus of my drive was on the eastern side. The town of Shinomaru was half erased by the tsunami, but the other half looks as if nothing happened. It was truly capricious, the effects of the disaster.

And then, just a few months ago in the fall, torrential rainfall brought more issues to the Peninsula (many places lost, ironically, running water). But restaurants like Kami Shokudo, are today serving up great local meals with love and aplomb. I spoke with the owner, Yamamura Masashi, who had just moved to Noto a few years ago. His wife’s family was from the area and they moved here — in a little mountain-ensconced spit of land at elevation — to raise their kids and be close to her parents. They had just got their restaurant up and running when the quake hit. Truly heartbreaking. On the day I visited the pasta lunch with morning-caught fish was killer.

I can understand why he moved his family here, especially thinking about kids: The Peninsula is truly breathtaking, the natural beauty of it is hard to overstate. I was in a constant state of gape-mouthed awe as I drove the backroads, up and down mountains, as valleys were revealed and hidden, as the coast appeared and disappeared. And looking back towards Toyama City, the Alps stun. Sometimes looking almost unreal. The sunset drive back down to Toyama along the coast alone was worth the effort.

The problem with disasters like this is that the affected area accrues a kind of “disaster aura.” That is, people write it off and then keep it written off far longer than they should. I was walking in Karuizawa, Nagano over the holidays, talking with some folks up there, and one person told me he canceled his big Noto trip this January because he felt like it was still too soon, that it might be disrespectful to the people trying to rebuild. No! In fact, it’s a great time to visit because so many would-be visitors are thinking this way — 2025’s the chance to explore the Peninsula with few crowds.

One example: I visited the “Squid King” — a somewhat world (in)famous giant squid that was built by the local government using COVID relief funds. This was scandalous at the time. But it turns out, the insanity of the publicity paid off the costs several times over in tourism bucks (so the local government says). Regardless, I spoke to a retired fisherman who told me the parking lot — pre disaster — was almost always packed. When I visited, I was the only car in the lot.

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Toyama City

Toyama the city: a quirky, delicious base from which to explore Noto, and a great mid-sized city in and of itself. Toyama is far off the tourist maps. As I visited the city multiple times in the past six months, I saw but a handful of foreign visitors. Most seem to skip it and head straight for Kanazawa.¹

Toyama easily slots into those Kanazawa-focused itineraries. It’s only 22-minutes from Kanazawa, and just 2.5 hours by Hokuriku Shinkansen from Tokyo. Spend a night or two. A great four-night iteinerary might be: One night in Toyama; rent a car and drive up the Peninsula; one night on the Peninsula; drive to Kanazawa and spend two more nights there.

Toyama is a compact, walkable city, full of great food and kind people — this is pretty much all I’m ever looking for in a city. It has street cars, hearkening back to an early-twentieth-century version of Japan (Tokyo, too, was once filled to the brim with street cars; today only two lines remain). It has a population of 400,000 making it a bit bigger than Morioka (300,000), and double the size of Yamaguchi City. But it still feels intimate. I picked a restaurant at random (le tunnel) and soon the owner was telling me where to go next. From there: a tumbling forward of hospitality and deliciousness. Everyone seemed to know everyone. And everyone seemed eminently committed to whatever it was they were serving / cooking / sommelier-ing.

The people living in Toyama love Toyama. Many have returned. There is a weirdly vibrant natural wine scene. You can drink it with French cheeses and French fries at Alpes. You can drink it paired with delicious oden dishes at Hida.

Here’s my Times pitch on the city in its entirety:

Enjoy cultural wonders and culinary delights while skipping the crowds

Cradled on one side by the Japanese Alps and on the other by the Sea of Japan, the city of Toyama serves as a gateway to the Noto Peninsula, which was devastated in 2024 by an earthquake and torrential rain and, although still recovering, is now courting tourists as part of its recovery efforts. The Glass Art Museum, which contains a public library and was designed by Kengo Kuma, is a towering cathedral of timber and light. In early September, the lantern-lit Owara Kaze no Bon festival fills the suburb of Yatsuo with dance. Many of Toyama’s culinary delights are southeast of its historical castle and central park: Alpes offers French bistro bites; Hida unexpectedly — but deliciously — pairs natural wine with oden (one-pot dishes) and izakaya (Japanese pub) fare; Suzukeema serves seasonal Japanese curries. Sip coffee surrounded by model trains at Blue Train and end the day with a cocktail at Hanamizuki-no-heya, a family-run jazz bar.

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Some additions: The bizarrely-named Sixth or Third Coffee Stand serves up excellent 3rd-wave-style espresso drinks. hazeru coffee has the best pour-overs (the location is weird but the shop is good!). Suzukeema, in addition to being a jolly pun (the owner’s name is Suzuki), served me one of the best cold-brew coffees I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a lot). It was infused with local sake kasu, and was bursting with chocolate notes — a whole lotta wow. (Sadly, this seems to be a summer/fall only offering.) Yamamuro is my favorite place to smoke a cigarette in the city. Jerico is supposed to be a great jazz kissa, but I ended up spending all my time at Hanamizuki-no-heya because the staff were swooningly lovely through and through (and the dad is a hoot). Cotton Club looks like the town’s main jazz venue. I hear URA DAILY STAND is great, but the five times I tried to visit (!!) it was closed. *shaking fist at sky* One day I’ll have their fish tacos. JIN JIN, a standing sushi place is full of yums, so I heard. Aesop is a cute little kissa on a cute little shopping street. If you’re into cocktails, Inabar came recommended by everyone (I haven’t been a drinker for a decade+ so I didn’t check it out (a few natural wine sips were my sole indulgence in Toyama)).

Lodging: I stayed at the Hilton Doubletree in front of the station — excellent staff and comfy rooms. But I’d probably stay at ANA Crown Plaza next time — it’s a slightly more “oasis in the action” positioning.

Toyama is also a great jumping point for hikes of all experience levels — the city sits in a veritable cradle of rock.

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My goal with these recommendations, as always, is to balance the following:

• A city that’s near oft-visited cities, but usually overlooked
• A city that is still a bit tough to get to, and so even with this recommendation and media attention, the potential for disastrous over tourism fallout is low²
• A city that allows a visitor to organically and intuitively experience “authentic local culture” — that is, a place you can go and see real lives being lived, without a tourism-heavy veneer (ala much of Kyoto, where huge chunks of the city have been reconfigured for the tourist)

In general: I’m trying to pull people away from the bog standards. Anything to get folks away from Kyoto, or out of Tokyo feels like a big win to me (and for both the cities being saved from more tourists, and the hinterlands-cities receiving them).

It turns out, too, that those who do make the treks out to these places tend to be the most interesting of tourists. They tend to be folks who have come to Japan three, four, five, fifteen times. Who are not part of giant group tours. Who are deeply engaged with the culture and move respectfully through the landscape. Who know how to speak in a restaurant without screaming. And in this way, are ideal visitors to Japan or anywhere.

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Each time I go to Morioka I try to interview a few tourists roaming the town. I’m always surprised by how adventurous and committed they are to exploration. They’re often in the country for weeks or months. They rent cars to explore all of Tōhoku as catalyzed by Morioka. Many of them recognize me or are readers of this newsletter. It feels good to see folks like this making the trip up north, and in the same way, I hope many of you will consider adding Toyama — a city north at a slightly skewed vector — to your future itineraries.

Happy travels,
C

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Noted