The Choshi Project

Most of you already know that Japan is called The Land of the Rising Sun, since the island nation is in close proximity to the International Date Line and therefore experiences each new sunrise before the vast majority of the civilized world. But you may not know which city in Honshu (main island) Japan gets the honor of receiving the very first sunlight in mainland Japan. The answer...

Choshi.

I recently took part in what is affectionately referred to as The Choshi Project. Choshi used to be a thriving fishing town, but in recent decades has slowly become more dilapidated and less frequented by tourists. Long story short, my friend and coworker SushiJeff has a friend named Pete, who's currently employed to help the City of Choshi revitalize its tourist industry. In particular, Pete was tasked with trying to see how "foreigner friendly" the city is for potential gaijin tourists. Pete recruited volunteers to visit Choshi with him, provided that we report back with our views of the Choshi hospitality and appeal... hence, The Choshi Project.

On January 28, The Choshi Project was underway. I rose with the sun and caught an early train to Kanazawa Bunko station to meet Jeff and Pete. From there, we went up to Tokyo to meet our fourth travel companion, Josh. In Tokyo, we hopped on a bus and started on our journey 2.5 hours east to Choshi. The trip felt short, because we barely left downtown Tokyo before I slipped back into a blissful sleep for an hour or so.

We arrived in Choshi around 10:00am and had a full day ahead of us. The bus dropped us just a block or two from the downtown Choshi Train Station. Along the way, we immediately noticed the effect of the previous few decades. Business vacancy signs were up on quite a few commercial buildings and boarded windows lined the streets. The city looked clean and colorful, but the empty buildings were difficult to miss on the way to the train station.

Once there, we immediately visited the Tourist Information Window at the station. The two attendants were reluctant (unable?) to speak more than a few words in English, so after a few minutes of trying, Pete began speaking in Japanese. And his Japanese is dang near perfect. But even when he asked what tourist sites were recommended, the information booth attendants were hesitant to give us their opinions. We were hoping that the tourist info booth would be able to steer us towards some highlights, because many of the attractions were spread out and we only had a few hours to see what we could see.

Choshi maintains a beautiful and historic electric railway line between Choshi and Tokawa, but to access it, one must walk through the modern railway station to a distant train platform. If Pete (or someone else knowledgeable of Japanese) hadn't been with us, we would likely have been hesitant to enter the station without first purchasing a ticket and may never have known about the old electric line. The Choshi Electric Railway was beautiful and the ride was definitely one of the more memorable train rides I've experienced here. I could really feel the connection between the train car and the tracks below. Many of the cars still have original wood flooring and siding, too. On the train route, we could tell it was a fairly small town, because people were constantly waving at others... as though everyone knew everyone else in the town. And the four Westerners standing near the front of the train turned quite a few heads, too. Children seemed almost mesmerized with us and adults were very friendly and smiled a lot.

We stopped at Inuboh Station, near the end of the line, to hike towards the Filipino - Japanese Friendship Monument and the spectacular view atop the hill on which it's perched. On our way to the monument, we found a spectacular temple, but for the life of me I can't remember the name of the place. It wasn't on any of our maps and was completely unmentioned by the tourist information booth attendants, despite it being one of the most beautiful temples I've seen here in Japan (no joke). I took some pictures of the place that don't do it any justice, especially since much of the beauty of the place could be found indoors in typical "no pictures please" areas. But this temple was more than worth the entire trip to Choshi. I would definitely recommend that the town add this temple as a key attraction for foreigners.

After strolling through the temple, we headed along towards the Filipino - Japanese Friendship Monument and view. The view is advertised as being "globular", meaning that from the top of the hill you can theoretically see that the earth is round when looking towards the horizon. Personally, I could see the rounding of the horizon, but it seemed to me more like an optical illusion because the structure we were standing on was round and not a quite perfect circle. Guess you'd have to judge for yourself, though. Regardless, the view was spectacular from every angle. We could see coastlines, residential areas, farmlands, you name it!

Shortly thereafter, we made our way towards the gem of Choshi... the coastline. An old lighthouse draws you in towards where the surf meets the turf in Choshi, the easternmost point in town. The lighthouse rests atop what seems to be an endless expanse of sharp rocky cliffs. We climbed the lighthouse after paying a small fee and took a few pictures from the top. After making our way back down, we hiked along the shoreline where a recent landslide appeared to have uprooted parts of the cliffs and reassigned the broken rocks into new positions on the beach below. Always the adventures, our group hiked through the rocky beachfront to take pictures of the unusual rock formations created by Mother Nature.

After hiking up the beach, we flagged down a taxi to take us to the fish market. Unfortunately, the market floor - where the huge tuna and other sea creatures are brought and auctioned off - was closed since it was a Sunday afternoon, but we strolled through the shopping area and then hit a nearby restaurant to grab some dinner. The tuna was, in a word, spectacular.

Worn out, we waited for a bus to take us back downtown Choshi so we could get on our returning bus to Tokyo. Much of the trip is a blur after catching that downtown bus... I remember sleeping a bit, waking, then sleeping more.

All in all, Choshi has the potential to be an attractive place to visit on a day-trip from Tokyo. It's nearby, inexpensive to get to, and has some unique characteristics that make it worth the trip. But the town has some work to do before inexperienced foreigners would feel comfortable traversing the city without a Japanese interpreter. Here's a few final comments/suggestions:

1. The best large area map we found was at the Filipino-Japanese Friendship Monument, in both Japanese, English, and maybe one or two other languages. Copy that map and put it at every major train station.

2. Put signs up in multiple languages indicating where at Choshi Station the electric line is located and that a ticket isn't needed to pass through the "modern" train platforms and ticket booths.

3. Advertise the temple near Inuboh Station. Put it on every tourist map printed by the town.

4. Print up some information in English (and other languages) to be kept at the Tourist Information Booth at Choshi Station and advise the employees to be prepared to recommend specific "highlights" and directions to them.

5. Maintain information about public transportation around town. Many attractions are far apart and walking just isn't an easy option.

And now, a word from The Choshi Project's sponsor, Pete:

Choshi city has put in place a navigation system, like a little guide book, that one can view over their cell phone by using their cell phone's camera that is also a QR code (like a bar code) reader. This takes one to a website made to be viewed by Japanese cell phones.

Now this system is not supposed to replace guidebooks or websites (smaller screen, etc), but meant to be a tool or supplement that one can use while trekking through the city, or when not near a computer to get information conveniently (discuss places to go, riding the train, a few facts on the landmark, etc.) The information is provided in English.

If you are in Japan and have a cell phone with a camera, use the bar code reader and tell
me what you think of the website.

Pete purposely did not include the actual web address for the site, because the site is not meant to be viewed on the web. It's best seen on a cell phone. I had the opportunity to visit the site using a loaner cell phone, because I'm the last man in Japan who still doesn't own one. It was easy to scan to the site and navigate. I would like to have seen a little more details about each of the sites. There was a section on Japanese etiquette that was helpful also. All of the key attractions were also listed on the site (except that beautiful temple). My one big recommendation would be to add directions from Choshi Station to each of the key sites and to explain answers to my comments above in some detail. The site definitely has a lot of potential when it is fully updated with all the tourist sites, especially since it provides a source of information in English, which is the one thing lacking at most of the attractions in Choshi. The English explanations will likely prove useful to tourists who learn about the site and the QR code - perhaps the information can be provided at the Tourist Information Center at Choshi Station. Anyway, the QR code (bar code box) is included as an image, so if you have a capable Japanese cell phone, beam your computer screen and let me know what you think. I'll be happy to forward your comments to Pete.

Also, as a side note, my pictures from the trip are posted in our Gallery, dated 02/06/2007.
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Update: Pete got back to me about the name of the beautiful temple I mentioned in this post... Manganji. Click on the name to view the Japanese website.