Everyone wants to visit Kyoto’s famed Golden Pavilion at Kinkakuji Temple, flamboyantly clad in gold leaf. But a few hundred miles away, there is a similarly captivating temple – Konjkido Hall in the city of Hiraizumi the capital of Iwate Prefecture. Vistors to Hiraizumi can also see other well-preserved temples, gardens and archaeological sites, primarily associated with the Buddhist Pure Land sect and the Oshu Fujiwara clan who ruled the region in the 11th and 12th centuries when Hiraizumi rivalled Kyoto in cultural and political prominence.

That’s not all. Iwate Prefecture, located in the northeastern coast of Japan’s Honshu island, boasts a spectacular coastline known as Sanriku Coast. Stretching 280 km long, it is a landscape of dramatic clifftops and plunging shorelines. The coast suffered extensive damage during the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, but reconstruction works are in progress to restore Sanriku to its former glory.

The most spectacular stretch of the coast is Kitayamazaki – 8 km of sheer cliffs rising up to 200 meters tall with wave-beaten rocks that have been shaped to look like abstract sculptures. A bonus to visitors is that Kitayamazaki is inhabited by a variety of seabirds including cormorants and ospreys.

Speaking of art, if one has walked the shoreline of Iwate, where the ceramist artist, Izumita Yukiya (b. 1966) lives, the influence of nature on his art is clear. Izumita makes both functional and pure sculptural works that are informed by the textures of the coastline he frequents, especially the jagged weather-beaten cliffs that hug the shore. Below is one of his ceramic works, an unglazed sake cup featuring stratified layers of clay folded over and over like the signature left by waves that have pounded the shore.

You can see the works of Yukiya Izumita in the Iwate Prefecture Museum, or visit his modernist gallery at 5-79-17 Tamagawa, Noda-mura, Kunohe-gun, Iwate Prefecture. Daily: 10 am to 6pm. Reservations required.