ECHIGO-TSUMARI

Rice terraces and snow country in Niigata, home to the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, the largest outdoor art festival in the world. The next edition is summer 2027, but many works stay year-round, scattered across villages, farmhouses and closed schools. You can sleep in James Turrell’s House of Light or Marina Abramovic’s Dream House. The Kiyotsu Gorge tunnel, reworked by MAD Architects, ends in a mirrored pool, and Yayoi Kusama’s Tsumari in Bloom stands among the paddies. It’s under two hours from Tokyo by Shinkansen.