Guess I’ll be the lone foreigner voice of dissent. The ONLY mine shaft you can enter without a guide is about 500 meters long, has very few informative signs (Japanese or English), and can be finished in 15 minutes. There are many more on the town map, but those are simply inaccessible former mine shafts.

There is one more you can enter only with a tour; we reserved the tour but it was cancelled because a single tree had fallen on the path between the mine center and the mine. I guess no one in the park had a chainsaw, nor could we have just walked around or over it.

The town IS pretty. Then again, I live in central Japan and have seen just as nice in Takayama, Gujo-Hachiman, and many “Juku” towns. It’s hardly unique. And that map… once again, it listed about 15-20 stores in town. Four were open: a tofu shop, a local snack maker (2 items only, which weren’t bad), a TINY souvenir place, and one (admittedly cool) restaurant and store.

We were done in under 2 hours and had almost no lasting memories. There’s nothing wrong with this place, but it does NOT meet my expectations of a “world heritage site”. There simply isn’t enough here to see or do to justify that label. If you go and expect nothing at all, it’s ok. The museum is nice. If you go and expect “world heritage”…. Well, you’ll find why this is one of the lesser visited sites in Japan.