Kansai, Japan · Countryside / satoyama, Mountain
The gateway to the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route, a World Heritage site, with traditional hot springs along the way.
Train + bus — Train to Kii-Tanabe, then a bus to the pilgrimage trailheads
🧭 Pilgrimage
A thousand-year-old pilgrimage route through mountain forests, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
One of Japan's oldest hot springs, a traditional stop for pilgrims.
Temple number one of the Saigoku pilgrimage, whose red pagoda against the waterfall is the iconic image of Kumano; you reach it up the 600 cobbled metres of Daimonzaka between eight-hundred-year-old cedars, and Heian-period costumes can be hired.
A two-person wooden hut in the Yunomine stream: the only bath in the world inside a World Heritage property, with half-hour slots and water that changes colour several times a day.
The Kumano Kodo and the Camino de Santiago have been sister routes since 2015: anyone who has walked sections of both can register as a 'Dual Pilgrim' in Tanabe or Hongu and receives a pin, a certificate on washi paper and a drum ceremony.
One of the three grand shrines of Kumano, the main destination of the pilgrimage.
The only river section included in the World Heritage listing: imperial pilgrims travelled down from Hongu to Shingu this way in flat-bottomed boats, and it can still be done.
One of Japan's tallest waterfalls, next to a Shinto shrine.
A fire festival more than 1,400 years old, in which hundreds of men run down the stone stairway of Kamikura Shrine in Shingu carrying torches every February 6th.
A torii 33.9 metres high, the largest in the world, marks the sandbank where the Hongu Grand Shrine stood until a flood destroyed it in 1889.
More than two hundred taverns in a few blocks beside Tanabe station: the only real nightlife in the whole Kodo region.
A thermal bath inside a natural cave open to the Pacific in Katsuura, with the waves breaking a few metres away.
Japan's largest fresh tuna port holds its auction at seven in the morning and it can be watched from a glassed-in gallery, with no prior registration.
Hot spring water that bubbles up directly from the riverbed — you can dig your own bath.
The third of the three grand shrines of the Kumano Sanzan, located in Shingu beside the Kumano River, home to a sacred gingko tree more than 800 years old.
The classic pilgrim's lunchbox: rice balls wrapped in pickled mustard leaf, and pressed saury sushi, both meant to be eaten on the trail.
On July 14, twelve fan-shaped mikoshi six metres tall are purified with fifty-kilo torches on the stairway to Nachi Falls.
Fourteen kilometres and 1,260 metres of ascent between Koguchi and Nachi, with a climb the pilgrims named 'the body-breaker'. Only for people in good shape and starting early.
Considered one of Japan's three best hot springs for skin-nourishing properties, in a mountain village within Tanabe municipality beside the Hidaka River.
In Shirahama: a public bath cut into the rock at sea level, already mentioned in the ancient chronicles, where the waves splash inside.
Brilliant white sand, partly brought from Australia to halt erosion, with calm water and the whole hot spring town behind it.
Recognised by the FAO as a globally important agricultural heritage system: plum trees, oak woods for charcoal and pollinating bees working as a single system for centuries. In February the blossom covers everything in white, and there are plum liqueur producers.
A coastal reserve of volcanic rock that local residents bought themselves to keep it from being developed, with trails along the sea and very few people.
At the village spring they sell net bags of eggs and vegetables to cook yourself in the boiling water, as everyone there does.
A rock with a natural hole through the middle in which, on certain dates, the sun sets exactly framed.
This is where the monks set sail who had themselves sealed inside a boat with no oars, bound for the Pure Land to the south; more than twenty cases are documented up to 1722, and there is a replica of the boat in the grounds.
Charcoal fired at more than a thousand degrees until it turns white and as hard as metal, the most prized in Japan for grilling; there is a centre devoted to it in Tanabe.
From May to September the gorge is run aboard a raft of lashed logs, reviving the trade of the river's old timbermen.
Morihei Ueshiba, creator of aikido, was born in Tanabe; there is a free museum in the municipal sports centre, and his grave draws practitioners from around the world.
2 km of sea cliffs in Shirahama, near Tanabe, with an elevator that descends into a sea cave once used by pirates.
The first halt on the Kodo out of Takijiri, a hillside village where the mist stays caught in the valley first thing in the morning.
The Kohechi links Koyasan with Hongu over seventy kilometres and three passes above a thousand metres; the Ohechi follows the coast. Both are far more solitary than the usual Nakahechi.
World Heritage since 2016: legend places here the cockfight that decided which side Kumano would take in the Genpei War, and here the warrior monk Benkei was born.
Tell us how many days you have and what you are interested in, and the planner builds a realistic itinerary with real train times.
Open the planner