The Best Day Trips from Nagoya: Castles, Mountains and Pottery Towns

Inuyama Castle is one of only twelve castles in Japan with an original wooden keep still standing from the feudal era — unlike Nagoya's own concrete reconstruction, this one predates World War II entirely and is designated a National Treasure. It sits about 30 minutes from central Nagoya on the Meitetsu Inuyama Line, making it the easiest legitimate castle-focused day trip in the region, and the old town below the castle retains enough Edo-period character to justify a couple of extra hours of walking beyond the keep itself.

The Nakasendo was one of five official Edo-period routes connecting Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto through the mountains, and its best-preserved stretch runs between the post towns of Magome-juku and Tsumago-juku — a roughly 8km hiking trail through forest that's become one of Japan's most popular short historic walks. Both towns have restored their Edo-period streetscapes without cars, and the trail between them (with luggage-forwarding services available) is genuinely walkable in a half-day for most fitness levels, making it a rare combination of real history and manageable hiking.

Tokoname is one of Japan's Six Ancient Kilns, a pottery tradition dating back roughly a thousand years, and its "Pottery Footpath" (Yakimono Sanpo-michi) winds through a hillside neighbourhood lined with kiln walls, ceramic pipe fences and maneki-neko (lucky cat) figures — Tokoname is also the country's largest producer of these ceramic cats. Its proximity to Chubu Centrair Airport makes it a genuinely practical stop on a departure day, not just a dedicated day trip.

Shirakawa-go, a UNESCO World Heritage village of steep thatched-roof gassho-zukuri farmhouses built to shed heavy mountain snow, and the nearby preserved Edo-period merchant town of Hida-Takayama, are the standout mountain day trips from Nagoya — but at 2-3 hours each way with limited direct public transport, most visitors do these as a guided day tour with private transport rather than assembling local trains and buses themselves. Gujo, en route, adds a smaller castle town with its own clear mountain-stream water running through the streets.