Kurashiki’s Bikan historical quarter — white-walled streets — draws visitors year-round. Red-brick textile mill ruins, ivy-covered tea lounges, green-lined canals... Young women’s groups and senior couples enjoy streets that feel like time travel.
Originally a commercial town thanks to geography, Kurashiki prospered in spinning from the mid-Meiji era; heavy industry grew in Ijima, Mizushima, and Tamashima. Founder Sunjiro Ohara’s commission to painter Torajiro Kojima to collect art became the Ohara Museum of Art, a core of the Bikan area. A commercial and industrial town became a tourist and art town.
In the Bikan area where NHK’s morning drama “Carnation” was filmed, you can make a one-of-a-kind My Candle or lose yourself in a planetarium sky at the science center — plenty for young couples and families. By the canal you might almost hear heroine Itoko’s cheerful voice.
From Tokyo, pair it with Kobe on shinkansen, or with Takamatsu or Matsue in Shikoku — shinkansen there, fly back.
Why not ask at Mainichi Travel in the B1 of Palaceside Building?