I Found Japans Best Tiny Village (Zero Tourists)

I've never been to this town before in my entire town village this area I've never been here before in my entire life and after this many years in Japan finding a place that I haven't been and having the opportunity to explore it is an absolute gem so that's what we're gonna do today first we gotta get down from here we gotta go in here close that and we're gonna head down this way we're gonna grab this and yes the gloves have a use because we are going to slide our way into town like this not entirely into town but we're gonna we're gonna give it a shot oh boy and I am going to there we go get this camera set up it should be okay and apparently they're like no no foot brakes the only brakes you're allowed to use are your hands hence the gloves so here we go oh boy these come dangerously close to the head so I gotta duck as I'm doing this but it's not dangerously fast in fact in areas like that I kind of had to pull myself to keep going so this is actually not that far away from I don't want to say not that far away from Tokyo because well it was about a two and a half to three hour drive depending on traffic this section is really slow so we'll keep grabbing forward but recently I've had a lot of people talking about well aren't you worried that these areas that you feature on the Tokyo Lens Explorer videos are gonna get overrun by tourists and I'm actually not and I'll talk a little bit about why today if we can get this roller slide actually rolling oh these flat areas go really slow also yes this is my second time to do this now here we go oh it's very vibrating oh it's so much fun I am most definitely starting to slip off this mat this slide is 250 meters and I love it and costs 400 yen so what like 250 American in order to do as many times as you want and it goes by in the blink of an eye because that is the end right there made it through safe and sound that was that was just amazing thank you well that's nice he said I can keep the gloves as a souvenir looks like this slide has even been in the newspapers and everything and this area over here has a whole bunch of these what do you what do you call these I don't know how to learn how to say these bead iron bead art I think that's I think that's what they're called the iron bead art and there's a it's out here and so let's get into the town and do just a little bit of exploring apparently this has been around since 1990 but I've actually been shooting this in prior part on a 360 camera so we're gonna switch over to a different camera also to be ride to to ride you should be in good health no lap sitting you know in case you want to in case you want to come and there we go we're just coming down the hill from where the roller slide is and this place is called Tabayama Mura then they've actually got a snow gate here for if things get like too bad they just close it up this area these valleys tucked into the middle of nowhere have so many beautiful paths to be explored perhaps for another time but it's also just a picturesque lovely little Japanese village that I have never had the opportunity to be to and the all the Kimetsu no Yaiba demon slayer stuff is because the mountain that the characters from demon slayer live on is apparently supposed to be not too far from here and so we we're not going to hike out there but I do want to explore this little village this is going to be the first Tokyo Lens Explorer adventure of the season and I'm so glad that we're back to these I've been wanting to get back to them for a very very long time and really interesting oh instant understanding so I noticed the gentleman over there was going through a gate to reach the farming fields and then I realized there were a bunch of gates here as well and if you look really carefully this one right here has something on it that says do not touch I wonder do I have the ability to to zoom in at all I think I can zoom in a little that there says do not touch and if you haven't figured it out already it's because these are electric fences and these very serious electric fences are required because this entire area is surrounded by mountains and that means bears this is probably a village that just has bears walking through it all the time some of the local areas will actually have a bit of a bear map so that you can see like what the the frequency when the last time bears came through just general bear spottings but here I'm guessing that it probably not just bears bears boar deer anything and these these are pretty serious they go all the way down too and they're pretty high up oh I I'm not gonna touch it to test also for but a wee moment I thought that this was a real dog and it wasn't so you know dreams be broken and all that but I have oh it is it has been a year guys since the last time that we were able to do a set of these adventures also I don't know if you noticed yet but do you see up on the the street light here there's this little blue guy he seems to be a character of the area and I have seen him up on there's another one on the light post way down there definitely too far for you to see but since the oh look at that okay I'm gonna try and get close to this without electrocuting ourselves can you see that up there that is where we started that's okay we were all the way up there so last year we did a fantastic set of adventures here on Tokyo Lens Explorer we hit up so many great places and there are so many more that I wanted to hit along the way and didn't get to and there are so many fresh ones that I have for this year but there's been a couple things kind of holding me back and preventing me from getting out and shooting here and on the main channel as much as I want to and so I have been see there's another guy up there so I have been storing everything up huh so I guess this farm here must be fairly well known the summit farm and this is the entrance to it anyway I have been I'm trying to decide whether or not I'm gonna walk down through the farmer's fields this way or we'll come this way and come around there's a lot of exploring to do so unfortunately I haven't been able to get out and do as much recording as I wanted to I in due time I'll be covering a bunch of the stuff that has been holding me back none of it's too heavy but it's meant that I haven't been able to put out as much content as I've been wanting to especially here on the Tokyo Lens Explore channel and so now now that we're finally getting things rolling again I'm really excited to just get out do more adventures do more road trips do more videos like this to each and every one of you who's has been to you you right there you know when you left that comment over on the Tokyo Lens channel and you said hey I really miss the Tokyo Lens Explore stuff or you know you over on the Minis channel see I'm always wanting to go down maybe a little bit after on the Minis channel being like hey I love the Minis but can we get some long stuff on Tokyo Lens Explore well I heard you and now here we are exploring this little village and it says speedo otose slow down and every single person like waves or nods at me as they go by that truck that had gone by a moment ago as well as the lady had just gone by this gentleman as well and already we're not even that far down into the village and I just really really like how this place looks it seems such a peaceful peaceful beautiful place to live and take a look at the street light there do you see anything can you see him I will there we go I can't really I'm struggling to zoom in right now it's not letting me zoom in so the people in this house looking down like what in the world is he doing there yeah they're probably not used to seeing people come through here walking around and exploring their little village but this smiles on all of these people here I love them so so much oh so this village is actually in Yamanashi so it's not that far off from Tokyo and it's I'm just kind of learning what I can about it right now as we talk the okay so it's right on the Tamba river and there's a hot spring in here that unfortunately I really wanted to check out but is not open today and so I am not able to check it out I really love how this area looks like so when you come right here you get a bit of a sign that shows you the split of the village we're gonna head down this way for now is this like the the local grocery and sake shop and everything oh I love how yep it's got all the alcohol and sake and everything and right here you can buy all your vegetables to plant on your own oh I absolutely love it I hope wonder if they'd mind if we just took a little tiny peek inside oh it's so quaint and beautiful and peaceful also can I just say that I love that this is the 2026 calendar right here it just feels so retro oh what a beautiful beautiful space all right we're gonna keep moving on I don't want to bother them too much we'll keep going down this way you know it's in the full adventures that we do like the long road trip stuff that you'll see on Tokyo Lens and everything usually in those ones I've got just a little bit more time and so I'll actually hang out in the area I'll talk to the locals that's how I find different topics for videos I'll come out to places like this to do these little exploration walks you know along the way just meet incredible people there was a video that I done on the main channel and then clipped it for the minis channel of a gentleman who comes and picks you up when you're drunk and he'll drive your car home for you he shows up in a gundam costume I'm just so distracted by this he shows up in a gundam costume and will drive your car home on your behalf and I simply found him because I was living in a village outside of I guess town it's not it's not small enough to be a village a town outside of Kagoshima city called Hayato and spending some time with friends there and one night they went out for drinks called him up and he showed up and it was just the most amazing thing that I had seen and I was like oh can I make a video with you and so exploring and meeting some of the locals in areas like this is what makes it really good but today this is just kind of a stop as I'm on my way across Japan literally just for a meeting it's not even anything exciting it's a very boring businessy adult meeting and so I wanted to do something to kind of spice up the day and so I figured you know what while we're coming out here I might as well hit a place that I've never hit before a place that I've wanted to hit and oh do you see the little bridge down there I see a little bridge down there and there's like a shrine space over here the river looks big okay let's keep going until we figure out how to get down into those areas oh I love it oh my love for this area is is absolute max at the moment this is just ah okay so I'm guessing that that's actually probably the onsen that it's like like the highlight of the area and it doesn't look like it's open today if you know if google is accurate at all also that slide that I went down the number of spider webs that I went through on the first round really cleared it for us for on the second round but oh get a nice little shrine out here there's another one up here I can't tell you how much I've missed just hanging out with you doing these walks it means a lot that you know I've been getting the comments and people saying that they want more of these to happen because it's something that I really enjoy like if you're relatively new to the Tokyo Lens explore content this entire channel started because I used to go on long scouting walks I would just go explore areas the whole reason I started Tokyo Lens is because I spent over a decade in Japan not exploring I recently put out a clip of a video of me going to Kawagoe for the very first time and I was like oh recently I'm getting into exploring and I got a few comments being like wait wait how had you never been to Kawagoe before it's such a major spot and well a norm doesn't do that many of the major spots and b the first my very first trip to Japan was filled with travel but the decade that followed was nothing but me going back and forth to work I didn't have the time nor the budget to travel and so Japan as much as I love it became more of a workplace than a place to adventure and have life and starting the Tokyo Lens channel was kind of my remedy to this and I really love this I just I love it so much and like the little hut in there oh this might be one of my favorite little villages that we have walked through so far and we've walked through some doozies one of my absolute favorites is the village at the base of the abandoned school in Shikoku oh man did I love that one oh I loved it so so much okay so this says that the onsen itself is down this way which should mean that the bridge is also down this way so it is this way that we will walk but that village down at the base of the abandoned school that whole walk and the fog and everything we got to see was just it was such a treat and now this is probably gonna take second place so far in terms of little villages little villages outside of the Nakasendo trail because those are just obviously impossible to beat I love them so so much okay maybe this is oh I can't even tell I'm getting onsen and sento vibes off of this so this might be it here hmm let's come down a little bit more yeah okay yep that is the I was just getting bit by a mosquito and you really feel it oh boy aggressive ones out here Japan has these like abu and they're like these tiger stripe mosquitoes which when they bite you they'll leave a welt the size of a dollar like oh that's absolutely absolutely awful and I think we overshot the bridge a little bit but we might be able to get to it by coming down this way but I mentioned earlier on that I'm not overly concerned about people coming out and flooding these areas mostly because a lot of the people who watch this I would say less than 40 percent of the people who are watching these videos are located in Japan and while a lot of people are coming to Japan the vast majority of people will either a not be driving and guess what there are no bullet trains or trains coming through this area and oh I really like this and two they already have a ton of like really high adrenaline high dopamine stuff on their itinerary that they want to go to and a peaceful little village out in the middle of nowhere that doesn't have a ton of other stuff around it like to a certain degree I can understand if there was a ton of other stuff around it like the abandoned school in Shikoku where we met Yo-chan and I can see the base here and I'm just loving the colors here but the abandoned school out in Shikoku where we met Yo-chan oh I love this scene right here look at this oh boy how much I love that okay that area actually has a ton of stuff around it like if you go into the nearby town that we did a live stream in there is my friend Ayaka's night cafe add color and we've done entire adventures and live streams and everything all around that area there's so many little temples shrines hidden areas and everything to find there are so many beautiful like rivers and bridges it's just pure exploration that area is actually known as one of Japan's unexplored zones and so it's very very much untouched by tourism and so people going out there despite the lack of bullet trains and everything to get out there that I get because you have a whole bunch of stuff crammed into one little area but something like this I don't I don't worry about it too much I guess the simplest way to say it is to be honest the vast majority of tourists are gonna be kind of lazy they're gonna hit the Tokyo the Kyoto the Osaka they're gonna go to the wagyu restaurants and eat famima chicken or whatever it's called and go to Don Quixote and be like I went to Japan as they ride the Mario Kart go-karts through Tokyo and get in everybody's way and potentially get an accident so I really don't I don't like those go-karts they're dangerous if you come to Japan I fully understand I myself have been trying to stop myself for years from riding those go-karts oh I very much understand the appeal the idea of riding a go-kart through Tokyo oh yes just wildly fun but they really really cover up their accident rates way way more than you might think they do there are a ton of accidents if I pulled out my camera every single time I saw an accident with one of those things I'd be pulling out my camera several times a week and seriously the amount that they've invested into the infrastructure of this little village is spectacular oh look at these little peels here hi guys let's head up this way see we can get a view of the other side of the village but if you come to Tokyo and you can find it in your heart to avoid riding those go-kart things I recommend it because there's a lot of damage and injury and worse and it all just kind of gets swept under the rug okay so what do we got now no way hey so I often talk about how one of the best ways to get to know any area is to swing through the michi no eki and these these are the little guys right here that they've had all over I wonder what this little character is wow it's cheese into uh hound dog elements whatever whatever okay see yeah you can tell this is a there's a hunting community because you can literally get these are magnets you can get shotgun magnets these ones are not those are just actual shotgun shells very interesting it really says a lot like there's not that many areas you can go close to Tokyo where you'll find a full-on like hunting community so this this character here man like so seems like these are essential oil things I really want to I really want to ask about this character though actually there's one right near the one right near the counter instead of carrying this over I can just point to it and ask her ah okay so he's based off the the kanji for the area oh my goodness guys I'm 100% as soon as we're done here today I am getting these tabaski cookies oh you know what I don't even think I'm gonna wait I might just get them right now those are adorable and I love them oh okay all right what and and there's keychains we this is out of control this is just absolutely I love michinoiki exactly for this there's just so many little things that you can find like local honey hachimitsu here okay I want to keep exploring the area we don't want to spend too too too much time in here so let's grab this one right here they got little characters of them here too oh this is I it is really easy to just get roped in and okay let's take a look around and see what else we can explore heading this way the michinoiki itself it looks like it's much bigger than just that shop there so michinoiki if you don't know what they are you they're they're roadside stations they're like japan's roadside yeah I said it twice that's it they're roadside stations and you at night if you need to you can park here there's a whole set of rules I did a video of it on tokyo lens kind of clipped the main stuff for the minis channel and I am curious about this little car just sitting there looking adorable and so the michinoiki itself kind of looks like this there'll usually be a little shop area and then this is likely going to be like the little restaurant down here you will have washrooms and vending machines and everything and we'll go down and take a look the restaurant actually looks like it's not too bad I want to take it I did not expect this place to be to have this much I just I found this village on a map years ago and I was like oh I gotta make it out there sometime it's not that far from Tokyo and hi guys hi oh oh just enjoying the birds okay all right all right all right so definitely a cute little restaurant and again we have our character down here I like it here I absolutely love it and okay so it's got information on the onsen here as well and 10 a.m to 7 p.m restaurant hours it's got everything the bathing fee it's not bad a thousand yen for that let's go explore a little bit more of the village there's I wonder how far there's got to be a way for me to get down and around I'm gonna guess we might actually need to go this way and come out and take the the high ground around because otherwise we're not going to be able to get out of the village also again just people enjoying the mountain life these little cars here little kei trucks all right we're gonna head up this way and then it looks like this will be the the main road that goes through the area and that should take us around to like the next section of bridge that we can use to get back and explore more of like that side of the village over there you can see the sign right there for the michi no eki michi no eki tabayama I was actually a little bit worried today that I wasn't going to be able to make it on time I had one or two things that held me up and I was like oh I'm gonna end up getting here after dark and we're not gonna not gonna be able to check out the village and I was ready I was all prepped for disappointment and so I'm extra excited today now that we get to do this but I also want to kind of open up to you guys because we've been doing this channel now since the pandemic oh my goodness how quickly time flies by on top of this channel being a place for me to put the walks that I would do anyway to explore japan it became a place for us to explore areas more deeply more slowly and just have something you can toss on the tv for a while and enjoy at a relaxed pace without having a information heavy video but what have been the favorites so far I have my favorites but you see my favorites are getting more and more difficult to do because they're slowly disappearing I guess that's part of what makes them my favorite is that they they're not meant to last forever but what are your favorites like has it been the village walks has it been some of our forest walks has been what is it what have you found on this explore channel that has really hit home to you because now I want to split things up in a way you see everybody has their own viewing preferences some people like the highly polished videos with international appeal and tiny apartments and all the wild stuff and everything like that and some people just like these chill relaxed walks and some people don't have time to watch either of those and just want little you know five ten fifteen minute clips that they can watch every now and then and so now we've got the main channel the explore channel and the minis channel and the minis channel is going to be kind of a mix of re-edited clips because the vast majority I would say I already I think I've already put out 200 plus videos before I even hit like a million subscribers yeah and so the vast majority of my videos have already gone out and there's a bunch of stuff there that I like reliving first and foremost I made this content because I want to be able to look back and enjoy the memories but also I wanted a place where I can just drop little mini daily vlogs here and there just kind showing what I'm up to and you know what I love this and over here there's even more but I see a smaller bridge over there so I want to see if I can make my way to that bridge oh I was going to go down here but it's chained off okay I love how this sign everywhere we are is just Tabayama village and if you take a look at the the first character in the Tabayama village kanji there it's the same shape as that little character that we've seen everywhere let me see if I can get a closer one so this this character right here the shape of this is what the little dude on the lights is based off of and I'm trying not to get squished by cars as I'm here but this little dude up here that's what he is also whoa how is that for a bus stop oh my lord that might be the single coolest bus stop I think I've ever seen in my entire life oh this is this is definitely worth just like stopping and taking a photo of like look at this what oh I love it way more than I probably should what look at this I'm gonna get hit by a car but more often than not the areas that have like these covered bus stops like this are going to be covered for the sake of something like falling rocks or the last time we saw this would be on sakurajima and we oh I gotta go up here I gotta see this little shrine oh these are not a good angle and this is really hard to not fall down oh there's our little shrine oh I love the little shrine it's a little inari shrine and I fully expected to get a face full of spider webs when I came up here but I didn't and oh is there a path there's very often oh there's always something behind it isn't there and this is why now I wear the the like ankle protectors the leg warmers whatever you want to call them because last year when we did our big adventure this you know if those were hard going up it's going to be even worse going down I ended up absolutely covered and I mean covered in leeches I am just trying right now not to fall down these stairs oh there we go perfect we'll come out this way I ended up absolutely just covered in leeches and by the way this looks like it's the elementary school up here and apparently this counts as the village hall it's so tiny oh there's a lot more traffic coming here through here than I thought there would be as well and that's the the bridge that we're aiming for down there my brain just stopped for a second when I saw this whole structure it's just propped up on this really old wood that looks like it could give out at any moment and yet it has not there's so many of these throughout Japan that are just propped up on wood that you don't understand how it's holding up and yet it is okay is this see okay now we play a game and the game we play is is this the route to the bridge or is this just somebody's backyard and you never really know but it's not roped off so I'm gonna I can take the risk we're gonna treat it like it might be the route to the bridge also there are some I don't know if it's showing up in the mic but there are some very very yappy dogs over there and to people who are like oh how did you oh yeah I don't think I don't think this is I got the feeling this may not be the route to the bridge but I'm gonna I'm gonna try anyway I do have to keep my eyes open I should just stomp I do have to keep my eyes open for snakes because not just the long grass but there were literally snake warnings by the slide this might be like a back rope but there's also just as much of a chance that like I've stumbled into stumbled into somebody's backyard I think I've just stumbled into somebody's backyard I 100% have definitely just stumbled into somebody's backyard here so we're going to come around this way and try to make our way back this is actually especially in the countryside not an uncommon situation and when I hiked the Nakasendo trail there were several spots on the Nakasendo like Japan's longest going pathway that like connects different areas of Japan that just go through someone's backyard you just one minute you're walking on a road next minute it dumps into a field and there are signs that say Nakasendo and you're just like walking through some woman's garden and she's greeting you has anybody done the Nakasendo like have you done the Nakasendo trail at all any part of it the Magomejuku Tsumagojuku area is by far by far the best and oh all right see if we can get up around and find see you have to have a kei truck in an area like this just to get through those narrow little one more shrine oh oh and he's driving through the shrine gates I don't know why I love that so much but I do shrine gates that you can drive through are probably on my list of like my top 10 things in Japan don't know why I feel they should be but there I'm almost wondering if like because I'm maybe the bridge is down this way it feels like this would line up with where the bridge would be oh how I love this place this kind of feels like I think there's a campsite nearby so this kind of feels like the the type of place that you'd come to do some camping nearby and then just enjoy the the local onsen and the atmosphere just kind of walking through the town that oh that is a beautiful bird you can't see it he's he's up on top of there and it's just have you seen any of those uh those videos that show the difference between how we hear songbirds and how they hear themselves okay again again we're met with the exact same situation do I go down this way do I go this way I I'm gonna try and go this way because I I feel like the bridge is right in front of me so we're gonna come under here I see the bridge it's right there it feels like this would be the path to the bridge but this also very much feels like it's a path through somebody's home and I love this some areas of Japan have spaces like this uh just for uh fire deterrent they'll keep a bucket nearby that people can draw from to oh this definitely feels like I'm going through someone's yard oh and it's so overgrown oh wow and that's prickly okay and I I'll come down this way and there's the bridge we found the way we found the way to the bridge and we didn't have to walk through these nice ladies yards there we go wow what an absolute adventure it was just getting to this bridge I did not expect that that brings us out they've even got like the city planning for this little village is just spectacular they've got a sports field out there that has like soccer equipment and everything they've got the tiny little community hall ducks hi ducks ducks just landing in the water the water is clear too it's quite nice and then you have these little homes here along the river and I just smacked the mic so sorry about that but oh it's quite possible that this might be one of the nicest villages in all of Japan and it clearly has a decent population I've seen a mix of both old and young there's the elementary school is literally right up there that there that's the elementary school and it looks like the building beside it is the gymnasium for it and they would have their own grounds as well and they have a michi no eki they have an onsen there's a campsite nearby and you saw at the beginning of the video just how tiny this village and wow yeah actually look at that camp uh I that's it I think I may have officially found the best tiny village in all of Japan like usually when you come out to a place that doesn't have immediate train access if it's not running off of the you know the the Tokaido line or the Shinkansen or something like that if it doesn't have some kind of major connective line running through it you'll often find yourself in a ghost town but this place is not a ghost town and not only is it not a ghost town but it's laid out and has just everything that you would need I was recently asked by somebody if I would ever move out to the countryside of Japan and I like living in Tokyo for about 95 different reasons and one of the biggest ones being it gives me the opportunity to come out and explore the countryside like this and what we have music that is the 5 p.m song for this area and it's playing right from here interesting so many places in Japan will have the same 5 p.m song just a song that plays to the whole neighborhood at 5 p.m to let you know it's 5 p.m I've never heard this one oh the way it just fades out at the end it's kind of creepy I don't know if the mic picked that up at all but that was like ominous and a little bit weird and creepy wow okay all right gonna try not to get squished by this truck here and I'm actually I do believe that that brings us right back to the shop that we were at before so where should we go next what area would you like to see also I'm pretty sure that this person that this outdoor thing with little I think that's a bath I'm pretty sure that that's their little outdoor bath right there and I absolutely love it this is officially officially my second favorite village in all of Japan and in terms of livability I would put it in number one this has got to be the most livable tiny village that I've ever visited in Japan so far I really love it but I would love to know what you would like to see more of on this channel this year because we're about to go on a of adventures and I'm still in the planning stage so if you drop your ideas in early no matter how vague the idea is it could spark something so let me know and of course we'll see you again real soon also I'm doing near daily content over on the minis channel so I will link that one right here go check it out