Your Favourite UNESCO Japan Site?

as an onsen otaku mine is clearly Yunomine Onsen :-)

Yunomine Onsen is a beautiful area - but I will say that the roads are windy and narrow even by Japanese country road standards. The Kii-Peninsula with the Kumano Kodo are quite unique

mfedley: i took the bus :-)

I have been to many but not all of the listings. It's really hard to choose favorites. Most of them are top-notch sites (not all).

My favorites of Kyoto's sites are Shimogamo Shrine, Daigoji Temple, and Toji Temple. Maybe I'm just lucky, but Toji Temple is never crowded, even during cherry blossom season, and it has great light-up events in the spring and fall. The Buddhist statues are also impressive.

Of Nara's sites, I like Kasuga Shrine the best, but I also found Gangoji Temple to be somewhat of a hidden gem.

Genbaku Dome in Hiroshima is of course an interesting site, but I don't really think of it in terms of having "World Heritage" status. It almost feels disrespectful to me to talk about it as a mere WH listing...

Ainokura is my favorite of the three Gashho-zukuri villages.

The castle ruins and Seifa Utaki are my favorites in Okinawa.

The Kumano Sanzan area is my favorite of the Kii Peninsula.

I loved visiting Hiraizumi in the snow, but that meant Motsuji's famous Pure Land garden was half-off limits and so covered in snow that I couldn't really appreciate its beauty or aesthetics, so I'd like to go back in another season.

The Christian Sites in Satome in Nagasaki are special to me. I got to hear a woman practicing singing songs of the hidden Christians.

Hi Rabbityama,

I also found Gangoji temple to be absolutely fascinating from a historical artifact point of view. The buildings and surrounding grounds are nothing too special - but the history and depth of knowledge is one of the best I've seen.

I also understand what you mean by Hiroshima. Understanding what happened there (along with Nagasaki) is more important than just having a World Heritage label. I guess it would be similar to having a WH label for something like the Russian/Kazakh gulags or German concentration camp locations.

I also visited some of the sites around Amakusa around New Years one year - it's quite off the beaten track and was one of the few times I found it difficult to find a place to buy dinner (including combinis). The history around that area is quite interesting but seems to be almost unknown in a western history perspective.