Chiba Prefecture sits on the east side of the capital region as a peninsula pushed out into the Pacific, and the prefecture’s own profile describes it in numbers rather than landmarks: an area of 5,156.48 square kilometres and a coastline of 531 kilometres. The same page says the land is almost flat apart from one range of hills, and the castle that appears in pictures of Chiba city is a museum finished in 1967 that charges nothing to enter.
The prefecture’s own page puts 5,156.48 square kilometres above Tokyo and Kanagawa combined
Chiba Prefecture’s profile page, last updated on 25 July 2025, gives the area as 5,156.48 square kilometres as at 1 April 2025 and places it 28th nationally. It adds, in its own words, that this exceeds the areas of Tokyo and Kanagawa added together. The coastline is 531 kilometres as at 31 December 2023, and the two reference dates are about fifteen months apart, a gap we worked out ourselves, so the area and the coastline figures are not a single snapshot.
On relief the page is blunt: apart from the Boso Hills, described as a run of mountains in the 200 to 300 metre class, the prefecture is nearly level. Its climate note attributes warm winters and cool summers to being surrounded by sea on three sides, and singles out the southern Boso coast, where the page says frost hardly forms even in winter because of the warm Kuroshio current offshore. It also states that precipitation is heavy in summer and light in winter, which the observation record for Chiba city only partly bears out.
February beats January for snow in Chiba, and the snow-day column rests on eleven years
The Meteorological Agency’s normals for the Chiba observation site put the coldest month in January and the wettest in October, not in summer.
| Normal for the Chiba site | Value |
|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean temperature | January, 6.1C |
| January mean daily maximum and minimum | 10.1C and 2.4C |
| Warmest month, mean temperature | August, 27.1C |
| August mean daily maximum | 31.0C |
| Annual mean temperature | 16.2C |
| Wettest month | October, 225.7 mm |
| Driest month | December, 56.8 mm |
| Annual precipitation | 1,454.7 mm |
| Annual sunshine duration | 1,945.5 hours |
October at 225.7 mm and September at 204.7 mm are the two months above 200 mm, and both sit outside the rainy season; July, at 136.5 mm, is drier than either. That is the part of the prefecture’s summer-heavy description the city record does not show.
The snow columns hold the sharper detail. The normal total depth of snowfall is 7 cm for the year, of which 4 cm falls in February and 2 cm in January. The normal for the greatest daily snowfall total and the normal for the deepest snow depth are both 5 cm for the year, 3 cm in February and 2 cm in January. So February, not January, carries the larger snow figure in all three columns even though January is the colder month. Snow is observed on 17.7 days in a normal year, 5.9 of them in February and 5.6 in January. Two warnings come with that last figure. The snow-day and fog-day columns have a statistical period of 2010 to 2020 with only 11 years of data, while the temperature, precipitation and snow-depth columns run 1991 to 2020 with 30 years, so the day counts are not on the same footing as the rest of the table. And the global solar radiation column is empty for this site, printed as a row of slashes with zero years of data, so there is no radiation normal for Chiba to quote at all.
Chiba was assembled from two prefectures on 15 June 1873, and that date is still a holiday
The prefecture explains its older name, Boso, as a compound: the region was made up of the provinces of Awa, Kazusa and Shimousa, and the name takes the second character of Awa and the shared character of the two Sousa provinces. The abolition of the domains in 1871 produced 24 prefectures inside that region, which were then consolidated: Kazusa and Awa became Kisarazu Prefecture and Shimousa became Inba Prefecture. On 15 June 1873 the two were abolished and Chiba Prefecture was established in their place, with the prefectural office in Chiba town. Two years later, in 1875, the Katori, Kaijo and Sosa counties of Niihari Prefecture were transferred in.
That founding date was turned into a prefectural holiday in 1984, and it is still marked on 15 June. The prefecture also records that its population passed six million in 2002 and that it is now the sixth most populous of the prefectures. Its own chronology is a list of infrastructure: a railway between Ichikawa and Sakura in 1894, city status for Chiba town in 1921, the formal opening of Chiba Port in 1954, Narita Airport in 1978, designated-city status for Chiba City in 1992, the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line in 1997, Narita’s third passenger terminal entering service in 2015, and the naming of the Chibanian stage in the geological record in 2020. The prefecture marked its 150th anniversary in 2023. Three of its entries record natural-disaster damage rather than construction: the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, which the page says hit the Awa and Kimitsu districts hard; the Tohoku earthquake of 2011; and the pair of typhoons numbered 15 and 19 together with the heavy rain of 25 October in 2019, which the page records as causing severe damage across the prefecture. Two further entries mark the electrification of the Sobu Line as far as Chiba in 1935 and the opening of Makuhari Messe in 1989, the same year construction began on the Tokyo Bay crossing.
The castle on Inohana hill is a 1967 museum, and entry costs nothing
The keep-shaped building in Chiba city is the Chiba City Museum of Local History, and the city’s own pages set out what it is. Entry is free. It opens 09:00 to 17:00 with last admission at 16:30, and closes on Mondays, with the rule written out in full on the museum’s own footer: if the Monday is a national holiday the museum opens, and the first following day that is not a national holiday is the closing day instead. The year-end closure runs 29 December to 3 January, and the pages add that temporary closures also happen.
| Item on the city’s pages | Figure |
|---|---|
| Admission | Free |
| Opening hours | 09:00 to 17:00, entry to 16:30 |
| Structure | Steel-framed reinforced concrete, castle form of four tiers and five floors |
| Site area | 8,748.59 sq m |
| Building footprint | 756.13 sq m |
| Total floor area | 2,416.29 sq m |
| Exhibition floor area | 1,230.86 sq m |
| Car park | 25 cars, 3 coaches, 1 accessible space, all free |
The building is younger than it looks. It was started on 24 March 1966, completed on 31 March 1967 and opened on 9 April 1967, under the city’s tourism section, as the Chiba City Local Museum; it was renamed the Chiba City Museum of Local History in April 1983 and re-launched as a history and folklore museum. A separate storage block was completed on 31 March 1983. Seismic strengthening ran from 21 November 2000 to 29 November 2001, and the museum reopened in December 2001. Planetarium projection ended on 31 July 2007, and the planetarium room reopened in April 2010 as the fourth-floor modern and contemporary gallery. The fifth floor, at 128.34 square metres, is listed as an observation room that also counts as a gallery. Getting there is on foot or by bus: 13 minutes from Kenchomae on the Chiba Monorail, 15 from JR Hon-Chiba, 20 from Keisei Chiba-Chuo, or the bus from stand 7 at the Chiba station bus terminal to the museum stop and three minutes’ walk. Coach parties are asked to call ahead.
Katori Jingu’s treasure hall closed in October 2023, and the footer still prints a 16:00 cut-off
Katori Jingu, in Katori City in the north of the prefecture, describes itself in its own page title as the head shrine of about 400 Katori shrines across Japan. Its footer, which appears on every page, gives the reception hours as 08:30 to 17:00, with prayer applications taken until 16:30 and treasure reception until 16:00.
That last cut-off is the interesting one, because a notice on the same site dated 30 July 2026 states that the treasure hall has been closed for refurbishment since Monday 23 October 2023 and that the reopening date is undecided, with an announcement promised on the notices page when it is fixed. So the site carries both a standing hours line that allots the treasure hall a closing time and a notice saying the hall has been shut for close to three years. A visitor reading only the footer would arrive expecting to get in. The shrine’s address is Katori 1697-1, Katori City, and the telephone and fax numbers printed alongside are 0478-57-3211 and 0478-57-3214.
Sources Checked
Chiba Prefecture — profile page on the prefecture’s form and history, last updated 25 July 2025
Confirmed the area of 5,156.48 square kilometres as at 1 April 2025 and its 28th place nationally, the statement that this exceeds Tokyo and Kanagawa added together, the coastline of 531 kilometres as at 31 December 2023, the description of the land as almost flat apart from the Boso Hills in the 200 to 300 metre class, the climate note on three sides of sea and on frost hardly forming on the southern Boso coast because of the Kuroshio, the statement that precipitation is heavy in summer and light in winter, the derivation of the name Boso from Awa, Kazusa and Shimousa, the 24 prefectures created by the abolition of the domains in 1871, the consolidation into Kisarazu and Inba prefectures, the establishment of Chiba Prefecture on 15 June 1873 with the office in Chiba town, the 1875 transfer of the Katori, Kaijo and Sosa counties of Niihari Prefecture, the designation of 15 June as the prefectural day in 1984, the population passing six million in 2002 and the sixth place by population, and the chronology entries for 1894, 1921, 1923, 1935, 1954, 1978, 1989, 1992, 1997, 2011, 2015, 2019, 2020 and 2023.
https://www.pref.chiba.lg.jp/kouhou/profile/sugata.html
Japan Meteorological Agency — table of monthly and annual normals for the Chiba site in Chiba Prefecture
Confirmed the January mean of 6.1C with a mean daily maximum of 10.1C and minimum of 2.4C, the August mean of 27.1C with a mean daily maximum of 31.0C, the annual mean of 16.2C, the October figure of 225.7 mm, the September figure of 204.7 mm, the July figure of 136.5 mm, the December figure of 56.8 mm, the annual precipitation of 1,454.7 mm, the annual sunshine duration of 1,945.5 hours, the snowfall depth totals of 7 cm for the year with 4 cm in February and 2 cm in January, the greatest daily snowfall total and deepest snow depth normals of 5 cm for the year with 3 cm in February and 2 cm in January, the 17.7 snow days a year with 5.9 in February and 5.6 in January, that the snow-day and fog-day columns run 2010 to 2020 with 11 years while the temperature, precipitation and snow-depth columns run 1991 to 2020 with 30 years, and that the global solar radiation column is printed as slashes with zero years of data.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/stats/etrn/view/nml_sfc_ym.php?prec_no=45&block_no=47682
City of Chiba — museum page on opening hours, admission and access
Confirmed the free admission, the 09:00 to 17:00 hours with last entry at 16:30, the Monday closure with the rule that the museum opens when the Monday is a national holiday and closes on the first following non-holiday day, the year-end closure from 29 December to 3 January, the note that temporary closures occur, the address at Inohana 1-6-1 in Chuo Ward and the telephone number 043-222-8231, the walking times of 13 minutes from Kenchomae on the monorail, 15 minutes from JR Hon-Chiba and 20 minutes from Keisei Chiba-Chuo, the bus from stand 7 at the Chiba station bus terminal with a three-minute walk from the stop, and the free car park for 25 cars, 3 coaches and 1 accessible space with advance notice asked for coaches.
https://www.city.chiba.jp/kyodo/annai/riyo.html
City of Chiba — museum page on its history and building specification
Confirmed the opening on 9 April 1967 as the Chiba City Local Museum under the tourism section, the renaming to Chiba City Museum of Local History in April 1983 with the relaunch as a history and folklore museum, the end of planetarium projection on 31 July 2007, the reopening of the planetarium room in April 2010 as the fourth-floor modern and contemporary gallery, the steel-framed reinforced concrete structure in castle form of four tiers and five floors, the site area of 8,748.59 square metres, building footprint of 756.13 square metres, total floor area of 2,416.29 square metres and exhibition area of 1,230.86 square metres, the fifth floor at 128.34 square metres listed as an observation room and gallery, the construction dates of 24 March 1966 and 31 March 1967 for the main building and 31 March 1983 for the storage block, and the refurbishment from 21 November 2000 to 29 November 2001 with the December 2001 reopening.
https://www.city.chiba.jp/kyodo/about/gaiyo.html
Katori Jingu — shrine home page
Confirmed the page title describing the shrine as the head shrine of about 400 Katori shrines nationwide, the address at Katori 1697-1 in Katori City, the telephone number 0478-57-3211 and fax 0478-57-3214, and the footer hours of 08:30 to 17:00 with prayer applications to 16:30 and treasure reception to 16:00.
https://www.katori-jingu.or.jp/
Katori Jingu — notice on the long-term closure of the treasure hall, dated 30 July 2026
Confirmed that the treasure hall has been closed since Monday 23 October 2023 because of refurbishment work, that the reopening date is undecided, and that the shrine promises to announce it on its notices page once fixed.
https://katori-jingu.or.jp/2026/07/30/
Last updated: September 2026
