Ashikaga, Historical city in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan
Ashikaga is a large city in Tochigi Prefecture in the central part of Honshu, spreading along the Watarase River and enclosed by mountains to the north. Textile production shaped the economy for many years, and today visitors find residential neighborhoods next to industrial areas and open riverbanks.
A powerful family from this region established a government in Kyoto during the fourteenth century and directed the course of the country for over two hundred years. The collapse of this rule in the sixteenth century changed the political balance in Japan fundamentally.
The buildings around the school show the traditional layout of a fifteenth-century educational compound, with classrooms and libraries built in simple timber construction. Visitors enter the same courtyards where students once practiced calligraphy and read texts.
Trains from Tobu and JR East connect the city with the capital in about an hour and a half, passing through rural landscapes and smaller towns along the way. Streets in the center are mostly flat and easy to explore on foot, and bicycles can be rented near the train stations.
In the flower garden grows a wisteria tree more than a century and a half old, its branches forming an entire canopy of purple blooms. The roots stretch beneath an area of over one thousand square meters (10,760 square feet) and carry thousands of hanging flower clusters in spring.
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