Chofu

Jindaiji's temple, soba, and a personal landmark

Chofu sits at the western edge of the city, and most visitors never make it out here. Their loss. Jindaiji is Tokyo's second-oldest temple, surrounded by water wheels, soba restaurants, and a proper botanical garden. It is also where Daniel proposed to his wife, so this site will always argue it is the most romantic spot in Tokyo.

Chofu sits twenty minutes west on the Keio Line and holds one of Tokyo's best half-day escapes: Jindaiji, the city's second-oldest temple, surrounded by water wheels, soba restaurants in thatched houses, and the hillside botanical garden above it. The whole pocket feels like a mountain village that somehow kept its postcode inside Tokyo.

The soba is the ritual here. The springs around the temple made wheat farming poor and buckwheat good, and a dozen multi-generation soba houses still line the approach. Temple first, then noodles on tatami, then the rose garden up the hill. This is also where Daniel proposed, at Jindaiji, so the neighbourhood gets a permanent pin on this site's map.