The Pearls of Honshu Island

Day 1 - Tokyo

Your first contact with Japan is one of our English-speaking guides, waiting at the airport. From there it is about 45 minutes by train to your accommodation.

In the evening, consider an izakaya. The counter seats eight or ten, the menu is written on paper strips pinned to the wall, and the food arrives two plates at a time, in no particular order. It is where most of Japan eats out.

Day 2 - Tokyo

Walk with your English-speaking guide through Ueno and Asakusa. Incense drifts from the cauldron in front of Senso-ji, a temple founded in 628, and the shops along Nakamise-dori still sell hand-cut brushes, wooden combs and rice crackers grilled in the doorway.

The two districts sit a few stops apart and read as two different cities: one built around a park, a university and a fish-market’s worth of small bars, the other around a temple and the trades that have served it for four hundred years. Your guide will tell you which streets to come back to on your own.

Day 3 - Tokyo

Start early, while the streets still belong to delivery vans and shopkeepers hosing down the pavement. The city smells of wet concrete and coffee at that hour.

From Harajuku to Shinjuku, Tokyo changes character every few stops on the Yamanote line. Takeshita-dori is barely three metres wide and lined with second-hand clothes; twenty minutes later you are under the sixty-storey offices of west Shinjuku; twenty minutes after that, in Omoide Yokocho, where a dozen counters grill yakitori beneath a ceiling of ducting and cable.

Eat as you go. A standing soba counter near a station will feed you in eight minutes for under 500 yen, and the broth is often better than in the restaurants above it.

The two Tokyos hold at once — glass towers, and two streets behind them lanes where someone waters plants in front of a house. Neither cancels the other, and the walk between them is the interesting part.

Day 4 - Tokyo

One hour from Tokyo on the JR line, Kamakura sits between wooded hills and the Pacific. It was the seat of government from 1185 to 1333, and the temples of that period are still working temples, not monuments.

Hase-dera keeps a wooden Kannon a little over nine metres tall, and its terrace looks down across the roofs to the sea. The Great Buddha at Kotoku-in has stood in the open air since a tsunami carried off its hall in 1498; the bronze is 11.4 metres high and has gone green with age.

Kamakura eats from the sea. Shirasu — whitebait — is the local dish, served raw or boiled over rice at the small places along Komachi-dori, and it sells out when the boats do not go out.

Then the beach, ten minutes on foot, where surfers go in year round.

Day 5 - Hakone

After four days in the city, a pause. Three and a half hours by train brings you to Hakone, known across Japan for its hot springs.

Mount Fuji appears from the funicular, and again from the boat across Lake Ashi — clearest in the morning, before the cloud builds around the summit. At Owakudani the vents smell of sulphur and the ground is warm underfoot. Later, the bath: water that reaches the tub already hot from the ground.

You sleep in a ryokan. Tatami, a futon laid out while you are at dinner, a shared bath, and floorboards that announce anyone walking the corridor at night.

Day 6 - Magome

This morning you take the train to Nakatsugawa station (about four hours), where the walk on the Nakasendo begins.

The Nakasendo was one of five roads linking Edo, the economic capital — today’s Tokyo — to the imperial capital, Kyoto, during the Edo period (1603–1868). Unlike the better-known Tokaido, which gave its name to the Shinkansen line that now joins those two cities, the Nakasendo has kept much of its older character, with some original sections intact. At its creation the road ran about 534 kilometres and held 69 post stations, or juku. The Tokugawa shogun, wanting to hold the country steady after a long period of war, built a network of roads to consolidate his political grip. One of the five crossed the mountains and was called Nakasendo — literally, the road through the central mountains.

Most of the route has since been absorbed into modern life, but the stretch between Nakatsugawa and Tsumago-juku keeps original sections alongside restored ones. After about two hours of walking you reach a part of the path called Ishidatami — the stone tatami — paving laid by hand, some of it original, some rebuilt. From there the way narrows under the trees and simply carries on.

• Distance: 9 km — about 3 hours on foot
• Ascent: 374 m
• Descent: 39 m

Day 7 - Nagoya

After breakfast, buy your picnic at the village shop, then walk up through Magome-juku. The village is built in stepped terraces against the hillside; from the top the whole valley opens out. From there the path climbs to the Magome pass, then drops into forest to the Tateba teahouse, where whoever is keeping it that day pours green tea over an open hearth and asks nothing for it.

After lunch the path passes the Medaki and Odaki waterfalls, where samurai once came to sit. Then Tsumago-juku, which keeps its power lines hidden and its vending machines off the main street. You can spend the afternoon in one of the local cafés, or visit Wakihonjin, the secondary inn rebuilt for the Meiji emperor’s passage.

To finish, a bus to Nagiso station and the Chuo line train to Nagoya (two hours).

• Distance: 7 km — about 3 hours on foot
• Ascent: 155 m
• Descent: 366 m

Day 8 - Hiroshima

Two hours by train brings you to Hiroshima. It was the first city in history to be struck by an atomic bomb, and it rebuilt. What you find now is a provincial city that moves at its own pace: wide boulevards, old trams still running, six rivers, and okonomiyaki griddles working from late morning.

Your visit includes the Peace Memorial Park and its museum. The exhibits are plainly presented and hard to look at. You come out with the accounts of the people who were here, and with the position on nuclear weapons that the city has restated publicly every year since.

Day 9 - Hiroshima

In the morning, train and ferry from Hiroshima station to Miyajima (one hour).

Once on the island, we recommend Itsukushima shrine first thing, to see the torii standing in the shallows of the Seto Inland Sea at sunrise — long counted as one of the three finest views in the country. Whether it floats or stands on wet sand depends on the tide; the timetable is posted at the ferry terminal. Then Daisho-in, a dozen halls climbing the hillside, with 500 small rakan statues along the steps, each face carved differently, and a welcome from the monks that is warmer than most.

After lunch, Mount Misen: on foot through sacred forest for those who want the climb, where the deer come down to the path, or by ropeway for the view over Hiroshima bay. At the end of the day, return to Hiroshima the way you came.

Day 10 - Kyoto

This morning you leave Hiroshima for Kyoto by train (two hours).

Then we suggest Fushimi Inari, one of the best-known Shinto shrines in the country. Walk up between its vermilion torii — some ten thousand of them, each paid for by a business and inscribed with its name — and look at the fox statues at the gates, messengers of the deity Inari. The higher you climb, the fewer people there are.

Day 11 - Kyoto

Today, the eastern side of Kyoto with your English-speaking guide.

Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion, was never silvered — the name stuck anyway. It is a National Treasure, and its karesansui dry garden is raked into a cone of sand and a field of ridges, redone by hand. From there the Philosopher’s Path follows an old canal for about two kilometres under cherry trees to Nanzen-ji.

Afterwards, the streets. Teramachi is an arcade of second-hand bookshops and old stationers; Nishiki market runs five blocks of stalls selling pickles, knives and tamagoyaki cooked in front of you.

Kansai cooking is its own thing — lighter dashi, less soy than Tokyo. Eat where the queue is local.

Day 12 - Kyoto

Today you cross to the west of the city.

Start at Arashiyama, where the bamboo grove is best before nine and the sound matters more than the sight — the stems knock against each other in any wind. Tenryu-ji stands beside it, a UNESCO World Heritage site whose garden has held its 14th-century shape. Then a walk along the Katsura river, which rewards a slow pace in any season.

In the afternoon, north to Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, and its reflection in the pond inside a ring of trees. To round out the afternoon we suggest Ryoan-ji, whose dry garden holds fifteen stones arranged so that you can never see all fifteen at once from the veranda. If you have had enough of crowds, Daitoku-ji and its sub-temple gardens are quieter.

Day 13 - Kyoto

One hour by train from Kyoto station, Nara — Japan’s first permanent capital, from 710 to 784 — holds a good deal of that history in walking distance.

The deer meet you first. Once treated as messengers of the gods, about 1,200 of them now live in the park where the main sites also stand: Kofuku-ji with its five-storey pagoda, and Todai-ji, long described as the largest wooden building in the world, holding a bronze Buddha cast in 752.

Then the town centre, where the Edo-period wooden houses of Naramachi keep their lattice fronts, and the local specialities — among them kakinoha-zushi, sushi wrapped in a persimmon leaf. Those with the legs for it can climb Mount Wakakusa, 342 metres, about half an hour up.

Day 14 - Departure

Depending on the time of your return flight, there may be room for one last walk in the city.

Then the airport by public transport — the Haruka express runs direct, about one hour. We hope you leave with more than photographs.

Until the next journey.