Ignored entirely or dismissed as "suburbia" by travel guides, Chiba is generally regarded as the most boring of the cities surrounding Tokyo. But, as William Gibson fans will know, there is one excellent reason for visiting Chiba, as the "Tokyo-Chibaurban sprawl" is where much of ''Neuromancer'' (ISBN 0441569595) is set:: ''In Japan, he'd known with a clenched and absolute certainty, he'd find his cure. In Chiba. Either in a registered clinic or in the shadowland of black medicine. Synonymous with implants, nerve-splicing, and microbionics, Chiba was a magnet for the Sprawl's techno-criminal subcultures...''As it happens, Gibson's dystopian cyberpunk visions are at times difficult to correlate with the reality of modern-day Chiba, but the area still makes a reasonably interesting day trip from Tokyo if you have time to spare and prefer high technology toys over mouldering temples. http://wikitravel.org/en/Chiba