Anjo, Aichi

Flat land, almost entirely so — the Yahagi River plain extends westward with barely a rise in elevation across the whole of Anjo's territory. Nearly half the city remains under rice cultivation, yet the skyline carries the silhouette of industrial plants, and the rail lines of the Tokaido Main Line and the Meitetsu Nagoya Line run through without ceremony, connecting the city to the wider Nagoya corridor.

The agricultural past here is unusually specific. When the Meiji Canal opened in 1881, large-scale land reclamation followed, and by the 1920s and 1930s the area had earned the nickname "Japan's Denmark" for its agricultural advancement. That history is held at the Anjo City Historical Museum, which sits on the old Ansho Castle site and keeps materials on the political and economic life of the Nishimikawa region. Not far away, the Honshoji temple precinct — a Jodo Shinshu institution that once held real influence across western Mikawa — still stands within the city. Kofun burial mounds like the Himekogawa and Futago sites mark an older habitation still.

At Denpark, a public garden with a working ham workshop, the Danish connection resurfaces in a practical, rather than nostalgic, form — visitors can encounter locally made ham and sausages. Izumi somen noodles and Peking rice are among the foods particular to the area. Each August, the Anjo Tanabata Festival draws the city's streets into decoration, anchored by the Tanabata Shrine, founded in 1960 as the festival's originating site. The ordinary infrastructure of the city — the Anforet complex with its library, the neighborhood shrines — absorbs daily life without spectacle.