Kashima: Football History, Shrine and Landscape

Kashima combines football history with Kashima Jingu, traces of the past and a landscape of forests, a lake and the sea surrounding the shrine. The city offers several ways to shape your stay: you can take an interest in the Kashima Antlers, explore local history or make the landscape your focus. If you’re looking for a holiday rental, it’s worth first considering which of these aspects of Kashima matter most to your trip.

Football history and interactive experiences

The Kashima Soccer Museum at the stadium introduces the history of the Kashima Antlers. At Kashima Soccer Stadium, the Entertainment Lab offers quiz and rhythm games that help visitors learn more about the Kashima Antlers. These provide different ways to explore the club’s history: the museum presents it as a subject, while the quizzes and rhythm games offer interactive formats. If you’re interested in football, you can make these attractions a focus of your trip planning.

A park, a tower and a long slide

The tower complex at Ono Shiosai Hamanasu Park brings together a planetarium, a local history museum and a gallery corner. Its themes range from outer space to local history and art. The park also has a 154-metre-long jumbo slide. This combination gives you different ways to include the park in your day’s plans: you can explore the facilities in the tower or make the slide a specific activity. At exactly 154 metres long, it is a distinctive feature of the park.

Kashima Jingu, local history and landscape

Kashima Jingu offers both a convenient point of reference and a range of themes to explore. From JR Kashima-Jingu Station, you can reach the shrine in ten minutes on foot or three minutes by taxi. The Kokoshika Mini Museum is on the approach to Kashima Jingu and displays information about the shrine as well as local history materials from Kashima City. This lets you explore the local history alongside Kashima Jingu.

Kashima Kami no Michi winds through the landscape of Kashima City, with its forests, a lake and the sea around Kashima Jingu. Kashima Castle Park offers a different focus: it was created on the site of the main castle of Kashima Castle. From the park, you can see Lake Kitaura and Jingu Bridge. You can therefore choose between a route through the landscape and a park with historical connections and specific viewpoints as themes for your trip.

A festival with three rituals

Kashima’s Saito Festival features the impressive Saitobayashi in the afternoon, a morning departure ritual and an evening spring ritual. Only district representatives and other officials perform the departure ritual. The evening spring ritual determines which district will be responsible the following year. The three elements differ both in the time of day and in their respective roles: the Saitobayashi takes centre stage in the afternoon, while the morning and evening rituals serve specific purposes.

Discover more places

If you’d like to visit more local pages, you can also find Shimotsuma, Kamisu, Joko, Yachiyo, Hokota, Hitachinaka, Chikusei and Omitama here.

For the broader travel overview: Ibaraki Prefecture.