Morioka: the trending Japanese tourist destination you’ve probably never heard of is a sleepy city in Iwate prefecture
- The New York Times chose Morioka in Iwate prefecture, Japan, as the second best place to visit in the world in 2023, surprising local tourism officials
- The city – two hours from Tokyo – with its traditional buildings and three famous noodle dishes, has seen bookings increase since the article came out
Japan is high on many travellers’ to-do lists, so it should come as no surprise that The New York Times elevated one of its cities to second place on its list of 52 places around the world to visit in 2023.
Instead, The New York Times has concluded that after London, the best place on the planet to visit this year is Morioka. And even the local government officials charged with promoting this small and rather unprepossessing city in Iwate prefecture admit to being taken aback.
“We were really surprised because we knew nothing about the article in advance,” said Norie Hatayama, director of the city’s tourism department.
“It was a complete shock when we first saw us – but it also made us happy to know that the city and local businesses have been recognised for all that they have been doing to attract more visitors to Morioka,” she said.
The city sits at the confluence of three rivers, with the Kitakami River flowing away to the south. The city is home to nearly 290,000 people and is surrounded by a range of mountains dominated by Mount Iwate, an active volcano to the northwest.
The Times article describes Morioka as a place to explore without the nuisance of large crowds, and just a couple of hours north of Tokyo by bullet train.
The city is making plans to rebuild the castle, which was completed in the early 1600s as the seat of the powerful Nanbu clan but was largely destroyed by fire a few years later.
The city government has appealed for photographs and plans of the castle before it was finally razed to the ground in the 1930s, and hopes to raise sufficient funds to return the classically designed castle to its former glory.
The article also picked out a cafe where jazz has been performed for 40 years, a number of restaurants – including one serving the local wanko soba – and nearby onsen hot springs.
Yet Hatayama says the writer missed a number of must-see locations in the city, including the Morioka Machiya Monogatari Kan, a former sake brewery that has been repurposed into a museum.
She also insists that no visit to Morioka would be complete without sampling the chewy local noodles known as Morioka reimen, served cold in a beef broth, or Morioka jajamen, a noodle dish served with a unique miso paste.
Together with wanko soba, these make up the “three great noodle dishes of Morioka”, she says.
In the first 11 months of last year, 4,690 foreign tourists visited Morioka, according to city officials, a far cry from the 65,597 arrivals in the year before the coronavirus pandemic. Yet the Times article has already had an impact.
“The sights and shops that were mentioned in the article have seen a large increase in inquiries and visitors, so we are looking forward to an even greater influx and the positive effect this will have on our tourist industry,” Hatayama says.
Hotel inquiries and bookings are up, both from domestic and foreign travellers, while there is demand for tourism literature in other languages. Plans are also afoot for maps of the city’s attractions in a variety of foreign languages.
“We have already had lots of very positive feedback from foreign tourists who have visited Morioka after reading the article,” she says. “Many of them say they agree with the article and say it’s a great place to visit. We hope to see more tourists in Morioka, whether they are first-timers or return visitors.”
