Toyama City

Toyama City is about 2.5 hours from Tokyo by Shinkansen. Mostly destroyed by fire bombing during the Second World War, the city itself is pretty unremarkable, as many Japanese cities are. Toyama allows access to the Tateyama Alpine Route and there are more local (and no so local) attractions listed on the Toyama Tourist Homepage. “When Japan” particularly loves Toyama Black Ramen, which is difficult to find outside Toyama.

Is it worth traveling to Toyama?

As part of the Alpine Route tour, Toyama is the essential starting (or ending) point. However, the city itself is fairly unremarkable, although it does try and brand itself as the “the center of Japan” due to technically-correct, easy access to the famous cities of Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo.

Since the Shinkansen was extended to Toyama in 2015, it is much easier to get to Toyama from Tokyo. In recent years the city has seen a rise in tourists (Japanese), almost half from Taiwan (and a limited rise in Chinese tourists, which bucks the trend in other parts of Japan). “When Japan” guesses that the kind of experience Toyama offers isn’t available in Taiwan (snow covered mountains) but is in China. “When Japan” saw buses of Taiwanese tourists on the Kurobe Dam tour and that was back in 2013. Tourist numbers have tripled since then.

A lot of what Toyama offers, you can get elsewhere in Japan, however it is a starting point for the unique experience of crossing the Japanese Alps, so it certainly worth considering, especially if you like seafood because Toyama is a coastal town on the Sea of Japan so as you can expect, the seafood is fresh and tasty (although it is tasty anywhere in Japan to be honest).