Inubosaki Lighthouse
📍 Chiba, Choshi
A tall white lighthouse on the windy cape at Japan's far east, where the mainland catches one of the country's earliest sunrises over the Pacific — climb it for a horizon that curves.
Where the Boso Peninsula runs out into the Pacific, the land ends in a windy headland topped by a tall white tower: the Inubosaki Lighthouse, standing at one of the easternmost points of mainland Japan since 1874.
Why It’s Interesting
Because it faces so far east, Cape Inubo catches one of the earliest sunrises on the Japanese mainland — a fact that turns New Year’s morning here into a pilgrimage. Climb the lighthouse’s spiral of 99 steps and the reward is a vast, uninterrupted ocean horizon so wide you can almost sense the planet curving. Below, waves smash the dark rocks, and the little cape town serves seafood and, of course, rice crackers.
Best Time to Visit
Year-round for the views; dawn for the famous sunrise, and New Year’s Day for the crowds chasing the first light of the year.
Getting There
Take the wonderfully ramshackle Choshi Electric Railway to Inubo Station and walk to the cape — the journey is half the fun.
🐿️ Cinnamon was here
Field report
The mainland's earliest sunrise is caught at Inubosaki, on the windblown snout of Chiba, and I am constitutionally incapable of letting a superlative like that go unverified.
I slept in the lighthouse garden hedge and reported for duty at 04:20. The Pacific went pewter, then peach, then on fire, and the tall white lighthouse stood there taking the credit as lighthouses do. Then I climbed its 99 steps — steep ship-ladder ones at the top — for a horizon that genuinely curves.
On the way out, wet rice crackers from the shop at the base (the local specialty; chewy, briny, correct) and the little Choshi train home. The humans who came only for sunset had it backwards. Dawn is the show. The lighthouse knows.
— Cinnamon 🐿️
📸 Cinnamon's camera roll
Snapshots from our very good boy on the road.
Where it is
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