Kanto, Japan · Town / small city
The airport's own town, which the vast majority of travellers fly over without ever visiting despite laying over right there: Naritasan Shinshoji Temple, over 1,000 years old with a fire ritual (Goma) several times a day, every day of the year, a Japanese garden behind the temple (Naritasan Park), and the 800-meter Omotesando shopping street lined with shops and restaurants specializing in grilled eel (unagi).
Train — JR Sobu Line + Narita Line from Tokyo, no real line transfer, ~1h20min, ¥1,230. Also reachable directly from Choshi on the same Narita Line, without going through Tokyo: ~1h20-1h25min, ¥1,230. The temple is a 10-minute walk from the station.
A temple over 1,000 years old with five buildings designated Important Cultural Properties; the Goma fire ritual is held several times a day, every day of the year.
Nearly 60 eel restaurants in a small town; at the oldest ones the unagi is filleted in the window, in full view of the waiting queue.
Five or six times a day, Shingon monks burn wooden tablets before Fudo Myoo amid drums and chanting; you can walk in freely and pass your luggage through the purifying smoke.
An 800-meter shopping street between the station and the temple, with over 150 shops, restaurants, and traditional inns specializing in grilled eel (unagi).
An open-air village museum in the neighbouring municipality, with streets of Edo-period houses and hands-on workshops in indigo dyeing, ceramics and soba making.
Three days in July when ten lacquered floats are pushed uphill along Omotesando street to the temple, with some 400,000 attendees.
A completely flat cycling route beside the largest lake in Chiba, known for its sunsets and for an unusual fireworks display, in November.
Aeon Mall shopping centre, the Shisui premium outlets and a Don Quijote open until the early hours: the last practical chance to shop before flying.
A museum with real aircraft and simulators next to Narita airport, and the nearby Sakura-no-Yama and Hikoki-no-Oka parks, green hills from which to watch planes take off and land close up, very popular with children.
Panoramic terraces in terminals 1 and 2 above the runways of the country's main international airport, with the ground machinery working below.
A hot spring bath with a rotenburo right under the aircraft approach path, a convenient stop for the night before a flight; confirm the hours before going.
One of the few museums in Japan devoted entirely to modern calligraphy, inside the temple park.
A Japanese garden behind the temple, with a central pond, pavilions, and wooded areas — a quiet contrast after the busier part of the temple.
A dairy farm with milking, animals, seasonal flower fields and a camping area, on the edge of town.
On 3 February, sumo wrestlers and television actors throw beans from the Great Hall before tens of thousands of people, one of the most crowded setsubun in Japan.
A temple dedicated to Sakura Sogoro, the 17th-century peasant executed for taking his village's grievances to the shogun and venerated as a martyr ever since; hydrangea garden in June.
The temple offers sutra copying (shakyo) daily, ajikan meditation and fasting retreats of one to seven days within the grounds themselves.
A free museum of the red bean sweet inside the 1899 confectioner that invented Narita's kuri-yokan, right on Omotesando street.
The 'Heaven and Earth' museum, which recounts the land expropriation and the long peasant struggle from 1966 to 1978 that came close to preventing the airport from being built.
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