About Japan

Japan might be the most overanalyzed country in the world. Entire forests have been sacrificed to produce books explaining Japan to Westerners. So it’s no surprise that everyone visits Japan with expectations. Some people romantically picture Japan as the Teahouse of the August Moon, a nation where the entire population dresses in kimono and lives a rarefied life in quaint buildings, writing haiku poetry and performing tea ceremony as delicate koto melodies waft through the air.

Others see Japan as a vision of the future, out of control: huge faceless sprawling cities with millions of people crowding into subways, living in cramped apartments, racing to keep up with the pace of robots next to them on the assembly line.

A third group, the road warriors who fill the business class seats of planes crossing the Pacific, interact with aggressive businessmen driving hard bargains around the world and see Japan as just plain hard work.

• Visit a war museum perennially at the center of controversy over Japan’s past.
• Bathe in a steaming outdoor hot spring bath catching snowflakes on your tongue.
• Watch your car, TV or Walkman come off its production line.
• Join an entire nation in celebrating cherry blossoms.
• See meditative tea ceremonies performed in rustic huts.
• Exchange toasts with fun-loving Japanese in a raucous bar under the railway tracks.
• Enjoy some of the finest cooking in the world, some of it uncooked.
• Ski on an indoor slope on a sweltering 90 day.
• Marvel at unbelievably high prices but then go to a discount store and buy a camera that’s still unavailable overseas.
• Gaze in awe at the world’s largest bronze Buddha.

Tokyo is the pulse of modern Japan. Seat of the national government, the city isn’t a stodgy place inhabited only by bureaucrats. It’s the center of the fashion and retailing industries, the big trading houses, the banking and financial industries, the arts and music. Home to 150,000 restaurants and bars, people crowd the entertainment areas into the wee hours of the morning. Once the castle town of the Tokugawa shoguns, some neighborhoods still evoke a memory of the feudal past.

Near Tokyo lies Yokohama, a cosmopolitan port city; Kamakura, a former capital with a multitude of temples in a quiet seaside setting; and Hakone and the Izu Peninsula, Tokyo’s playgrounds.
Fascinating places match fascinating experiences. Sports lovers can revel insumo, baseball, soccer and a host of martial arts. Crafts aficionados can choose from ceramics, weaving, dyeing, papermaking and woodworking to name just a few.

Experience Japanese hospitality by staying at a traditional inn. Bathe at a hot spring resort. Try a variety of Japanese cuisine from sushi bars to noodles to kaiseki, elaborate haute cuisine. Sing your heart out at a karaoke bar. Browse through temple flea markets and antique stores.

Take the plunge. Tokyo awaits you.