Eating in Japan
Regional Specialities, Prefecture by Prefecture
Japan organises its food by place with a seriousness other countries reserve for wine. One dish per prefecture worth changing your route…
Travel style: Off the beaten path
Destination Guides
Toyama and the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route
Six modes of transport in one day, from sea level to 2,450 metres, through a corridor cut in twenty metres of snow.…
Destination Guides
Nagasaki: A Harbour City with a European Past
For 218 years this was Japan's only window on the West — a single artificial island where Dutch traders were confined. The…
Destination Guides
Kagawa and the Setouchi Art Islands
Japan's smallest prefecture, an inland sea dotted with islands that were dying until contemporary art arrived, and a noodle culture taken seriously…
Destination Guides
Wakayama: Koyasan and the Kumano Kodo
A monastery town of 117 temples on a mountain plateau, a pilgrimage route walked for a thousand years, and a night sleeping…
Destination Guides
Aomori: Nebuta, Apples and the Far North
The top of Honshu: a festival of illuminated paper warriors, a castle with 2,600 cherry trees, a 5,000-year-old village, and more snow…
Destination Guides
Sendai and Matsushima: The Easy Way into Tohoku
Ninety minutes from Tokyo and almost no foreign visitors. A city of tree-lined avenues, a bay of 260 pine islands, and the…
Destination Guides
Nagano: Snow Monkeys, the Alps and Zenkoji
Japan's roof: eight of the country's ten highest peaks, a 1,400-year-old temple that predates the split in Japanese Buddhism, and macaques that…
Destination Guides
Kanazawa: Kyoto Without the Queues
A castle town that escaped the bombing, with one of Japan's three great gardens, an intact geisha quarter, a serious modern art…
Destination Guides
Okinawa: Islands, Reefs and a Different Japan
A separate kingdom until 1879, with its own language, food and architecture, and 160 islands strung out over a thousand kilometres. The…