Japan
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Visit Japan
What stays with you is how quiet a crowded place can be. A Tokyo commuter train at eight in the morning, full to the doors, and nobody speaks. Then a small bar in a side street seats six people and the owner remembers what you drank the night before. Japan does both kinds of place, the huge and the tiny, and does them carefully. A rail pass makes the country feel small: Tokyo to Kyoto takes just over two hours. Go for two weeks the first time and leave one day empty; the best evening is usually the one nobody planned.
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Wait for the train at the Slam Dunk crossing in Kamakura
What you remember afterwards isn't the train, small and green, already leaving, but the waiting: the barrier bell, the specific hush of thirty strangers holding phones still — and behind it all, the sea doing nothing dramatic.
Best time:Any season; clearest skies October–March, avoid the June rainy season
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Walk the torii tunnel at Fushimi Inari before the tour buses arrive
The first gate is not what you expect: vermillion paint still tacky at the edges, and beneath it, stencilled in white, the name of a noodle company you have never heard of.
Best time:Any time of year; spring and autumn give the mildest walking weather
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See the cherry blossom in Kyoto
The blossom lasts about a week, and the whole country follows a forecast for it, like weather.
Best time:Late March to early April, depending on the year
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Sleep in a temple on Mount Koya
Koyasan is a mountain town of more than a hundred temples, and about fifty of them take guests.
Best time:All year; snow in winter
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Walk the Kumano Kodo
Pilgrims have walked these forest paths on the Kii peninsula for about a thousand years, and the stone steps are worn into shallow bowls.
Best time:March to May, October to November
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Snowboard in Niseko
Cold air comes off the Sea of Japan, picks up moisture and dumps it on Hokkaido as snow so dry it squeaks.
Best time:Mid-December to March; January is deepest