Kuranomachi Historic District

Known as 'Little Edo,' Tochigi City preserves rows of white-walled kura storehouses and black merchant townhouses along the Uzuma River. Flat-bottomed boats glide beneath weeping willows past buildings that once served as trading posts for the Edo-period hemp trade. The pace is genuinely slow, most visitors are domestic and the covered shopping arcade retains family-run confectioners that have operated for generations.