4443 Travel Guide

The Hikiyama Museum in Motohama-cho, Nagahama, Shiga, opened in 2000 and is dedicated to the Nagahama Hikiyama Festival - inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2016 for its child Kabuki. Two real festival floats are always on display, and the second-floor video room screens five films on the festival, child Kabuki and float construction. Photography is allowed; every April 9-17 the festival adds live float parades through the city.

Himure Hachimangu is the chief shrine of Omihachiman's Miyauchi-cho, said to have welcomed the deity from Usa Hachimangu in 991 by imperial order, giving the city its name. Moved here as the castle town's guardian when Hideyoshi's nephew Hidetsugu built Hachiman-yama Castle, it long anchored the Omi merchants; its Four-Monkey gate and the national-treasure Annam Voyage Votive Plaque repay a close look.

Hachiman-yama Castle is a mountain-castle ruin on 272 m Mt. Hachiman in Omihachiman, Shiga, built by Toyotomi Hidetsugu in 1585 and abandoned after his fall in 1595. Stone walls and the baileys of the north, west and second enclosures remain; the inner-bailey site now holds Zuiryu-ji, the temple honoring Hidetsugu. From the top you overlook the old castle town, the Hachiman-bori canal and Lake Biwa - a vantage for the 'castle-town + water-town' layout within Lake Biwa Quasi-National Park.

Kurokabe Square in Motohama-cho, Nagahama, Shiga, is a historic quarter grown around the former 130th National Bank branch built in 1900. The black-plastered Western-style hall, known as the 'black-wall bank', reopened in 1989 as a glass showcase (Kurokabe No.1 Hall, the Glass House), and some thirty Edo-to-Meiji buildings around it have been converted into glass studios, museums, galleries, cafes and shops — a glass-art district on the old Hokkoku Kaido drawing millions of visitors a year.