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INTRODUCING JAPAN

It has become something of a cliché to talk about Japan in terms of contrasts, but Japan really is a country defined by juxtapositions. For all of Japan’s technological advances, not to mention the unquenchable thirst for the new and the next you see in cities like Tokyo, Japanese society is still rooted deep in tradition. Timeless and cutting edge comfortably sit side by side, as do the sacred and the cute. Japan prides itself on an appreciation of nature, yet nowhere seems safe from concrete, a vending machine or a gaudy pachinko parlor. No wonder the country can bemuse first-timers just as much as it can keep surprising old hands.

Nagoya City Science Museum

Sensoji Temple

Nara Park

Hachimangu Shrine

Fushimi Inari Shrine

Ginkakuji Temple

Umeda Sky Building

Traditional Restaurant

TIMELESS JAPAN

A Modern Nation That Still Values its Traditional Past

Progress is unrelenting and rapier in many fields and facets of Japan, yet there’s no shortage of areas where the country happily stands firm against the drifting sands of time. Just cast your eyes over a typical tourist brochure, where kimono-clad geisha shuffle between appointments in Kyoto’s Gion district, Mount Fuji stands capped in white and sumo wrestlers batter each other senseless, and you’ll realize that timeless is big in Japan.

For a visitor, that means getting to experience an array of cultural delights often far removed from anything back home. You can eat forms of cuisine (pages 14–17) that have been perfected over centuries. You can shop for and even try your hand at traditional crafts as diverse as pottery, indigo dyeing, and making washi paper. You can even go deeper with Zen meditation classes, cooking classes, ikebana flower arranging workshops, the tea ceremony and far beyond. In cities such as Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, you can watch highly stylized kabuki theater or check out Noh theater, geisha shows and the old-fashioned slapstick comedy of manzai. All over the country you can visit historic sites like the World Heritage-designated shrines and temples of Kyoto and Nara, Himeji Castle, and many other places that leave an indelible imprint on travelers.

Along with all that tradition also comes formality. Japanese has a complex system of formal honorific speech for use in certain business and social settings to show respect, highlight status and so on. Behavior is formalized, too. The Japanese don’t go around bowing deeply to everyone all the time (life doesn’t mimic most travel documentaries), but there are set patterns of behavior for many situations, whether that’s how business cards are exchanged (given and received with both hands) or how a potential customer is greeted when they enter a store.

Remove the tourist brochure sugar coating and at times Japan’s fondness for tradition can be a negative, too; although for a foreigner the negatives often manifest themselves as humorous and quaint rather than an annoyance. Starting with the annoying, in many companies, business can progress slowly, with decision-making processes rarely deviating from cumbersome time-honored patterns. It doesn’t matter if a policy or procedure is inefficient, change would be worse—better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Avoid risk at all cost. Stick to the rules, at least publicly (one must keep face, after all), no matter how silly they seem. With that, Japan has “No” signs everywhere, from funny cartoon manner posters on the trains to warning signs in toilets (albeit not enough signs that tell elderly locals to stop spitting in the street!). Yet even the long list of “Nos” in places like hotels isn’t intended to be unwelcoming, it’s all about avoiding conflict and disruption; about keeping the wa (harmony). And in Japan, there’s nothing quite as timeless as that.

Horyuji Temple in Nara (page 82), home to some of the oldest wooden buildings in the world.

A monk in Kamakura (page 56), Japan’s capital from 1185–1333. The town is only an hour from central Tokyo, but retains so many reminders of its rich past that it feels like an entirely different world.

Kyoto’s Gion Matsuri is one of Japan’s biggest annual events. Lasting throughout July and featuring events that include a massive procession of floats through central Kyoto, the festival began in the 800s as a purification ritual to ward off a plague.

Be it Kyoto’s temple gardens or classic stroll gardens in Tokyo such as Kiyosumi and Rikugien, traditional landscaping is another aspect of old Japan that thankfully shows no sign of moving aside.

A display of archery in Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine. Japan is a very forward-looking country in many regards, but there is still a strong appreciation of (and pride in) its samurai past. You see that in so many places, from reenactments and even to Japan’s national football team—nicknamed “Samurai Blue”.

One of the small gardens at Daitokuji Temple in Kyoto.

Ritsurin Garden in Takamatsu on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, is an expansive example of traditional landscaping that utilizes the concept of borrowed scenery—incorporating the natural surrounds around the garden as a backdrop to its actual design.

Images of geisha and maiko (trainee geisha) in Kyoto might be considered a touch clichéd by some, but there’s nothing fake about the glimpses of geisha you might well get to enjoy in the former capital.

Magome, one of the beautifully preserved towns along the old Nakasendo highway that connected Edo and Kyoto.

Weddings for some are still a traditional Shinto affair, although white weddings are far more common.

Green tea doesn’t have to be part of a ceremony. For many, it’s a simple, daily staple much like coffee.

The stunning Himeji Castle.

NOW AND FUTURE JAPAN

Hi-Tech Design and an Obsessive Attention to Small Details

Visit any part of urban Japan and the country’s modern faces don’t so much reveal themselves, they pounce. For a first-time visit, it can be a dizzying experience. Concrete dominates. Cities increasingly grow upwards from their centers, and then roll long and flat unbroken far beyond their arbitrary borders. They are frequently crowded, too, from cramped train carriages and crawling highways to heaving shopping malls. Vending machines are on every corner; convenience stores, too. It’s energetic, often chaotic, but never dull. And while sometimes it feels like Japan refuses to cut its umbilical cord to the Edo era (try dealing with a Japanese bank or, far more seriously, look at something like the lack of gender equality) there are times when it feels the country has gone further into the future than Buck Rogers.

Architecture is certainly one area where Japan continuously pushes the boundaries, and the gray of central Tokyo in particular is often punctuated by the cutting-edge work of internationally acclaimed Japanese architects like Toyo Ito, Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, Kisho Kurokawa, and Kenzo Tange. Pritzker Prize-winning Ando’s Omotesando Hills is an obvious example of modern Japanese style, although the former boxer, former trucker’s (and self-taught architect’s) work in Naoshima (pages 102–103) is arguably more representative of his distinctive use of rough concrete, stark spaces, and natural lighting.

Then there’s technology and manufacturing. With automotives, names like Nissan, Honda, Suzuki, Daihatsu, Mazda, and Toyota—the latter whose factory tours are a highlight of a trip to Nagoya—have made Japan one of a small group of global leaders, as, a little less fashionably, have industrial and heavy machine makers such as Mitsubishi. It’s similar within home electronics and brands such as Panasonic, Sony, NEC, and Hitachi. And don’t forget the cameras of Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Minolta, and more. Yet, back to the contrasts, even in a country where robots greet customers with a bow, bathtubs talk and toilets perform a wash and dry, sometimes even the simplest and most effective low-tech solutions are overlooked—just try and find a flat with good insulation.

Beyond that, Japan is also a leader when it comes to things geeky. For gamers, think PlayStation and Nintendo. For cartoons, comic and animation, where to start? It permeates all parts of Japanese society. You see adults reading thick manga comics on rush hour trains. All sorts of companies, from tourism agencies to shrines, use comic strips and mascots to get their messages across. And Japanese manga and anime have legions of fans around the globe, in the process spawning a billion-dollar business.

The E5 Series is one of the newer bullet trains, debuting in 2011 and with a maximum speed of 320 km/h (200 mph).

A Kawasaki prototype. Japan’s automotive companies frequently lead the way.

Nagoya City Science Museum. As well as the futuristic design, inside it’s full of hands-on activities designed to inspire the next generation of scientists.

A prototype on display at Toyota’s main production complex near Nagoya. A visit here can also include a tour of the high-tech, mostly automated production lines.

The Tokyo Big Sight convention center in Tokyo’s Odaiba district.

It might look like something from Thunderbirds, but this is one of the boats that transports people up and down the Sumida River, running from Asakusa to Hamarikyu Gardens and Odaiba.

Toyota’s companion robot Kirobo Mini, who has traveled to the International Space Station.

One of Toyota’s robots. Now it just plays the violin for school kids, but one day developers hope robots will be able to function as care-givers, concierges and in many other capacities.

Naoshima is home to dozens of art installations, such as the Frog and Cat by Karel Appel pictured here, as well as several museums.

The Shinjuku skyline.

A “game center” (amusement arcade). In Tokyo and elsewhere, they come in all shapes and sizes, from virtual reality-heavy centers like Joypolis to old-school, retro-only arcades where you can turn back the clock with a bit of Street Fighter.

Japan’s otaku, which could roughly translate as geek (although that doesn’t quite capture all the nuances), fuel massive anime, manga and related industries. From cosplay outfits to figurines, video games to comics, visit Akihabara in Tokyo and you can take in all of Japan’s otaku color and energy.

Depending on one’s point of view, the Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku’s glitzy, neon-heavy multimedia cabaret could be the ultimate in tacky or wonderful kitsch.

WASHOKU: JAPANESE CUISINE

A Foodie’s Paradise

Food. Be it sushi, ramen or any of the hundreds of other dishes found around Japan, Japanese cuisine has to be one of the country’s greatest claims to fame. In a nation full of foodies, food is a central fixture of celebrations and festivals, food-related shows dominate prime time TV, cookbooks and cooking magazines fill entire aisles in bookstores, and wherever you go it rarely feels you are that far from somewhere to grab a bite to eat. Tokyo alone is home to somewhere near 100,000 licensed eating establishments that range from almost three hundred wallet-busting Michelin-starred restaurants to simple, standing-only noodle joints that give change from ¥500. Leave aside the vast selection of international flavors, the varieties of just Japanese cuisine are mind blowing, but despite that variety there are certain threads that bind everything together.

Afocus on the use of seasonal produce is shared by many types of Japanese cuisine, from the in-season vegetables in Buddhist shojin ryori cuisine to the seafood selected by sushi restaurants. So is specialization: restaurants dedicated only to soba noodles, tofu dishes, pork cutlets, tempura, and many other single foods are extremely common. Look at Tokyo and you’ll see that certain areas specialize, too. Okubo, a part of Shinjuku, is home to a concentration of Korean restaurants. Ryogoku is known for chanko nabe, the hot pot of meat, vegetables and seafood used by sumo wrestlers to bulk up. The Tsukishima area is the birthplace of monjayaki, a happy-tasting but not especially appetizing-looking dish that begins as a runny batter containing chopped vegetables, meat or seafood and then after a while on a hotplate becomes a sticky mess like fried cheese.

And this kind of specializing stretches out on a national scale, too. Almost every region, city and even small town you visit will have at least one local dish it is proud of. Moving away from Tokyo, Yokohama has its Chinatown restaurants. Up north in Hokkaido, the harsh, cold climate has given Sapporo local specialties that include warming soup curry (like a mulligatawny), a hearty miso-based version of ramen, and a type of mutton barbecue somewhat oddly named after Genghis Khan. At the opposite end of the archipelago, balmy Okinawa has a version of soba noodles in broth that are topped with melt-in-the-mouth pork (soki soba), a wonderful stir-fry of bitter gourd, spam, tofu and egg called goya champuru, and oddities that include vinegared pig’s ears (mimiga) and stewed pig’s trotters (tonsoku). And where to start with Kyoto? You can find restaurants serving refined kaiseki cuisine all over the country, but the multi-course collection of artistically presented seasonal delicacies is never better than in Kyoto.

In fact, play a word association game with a Japanese friend, and you’ll likely get a lot of foodie responses. Osaka? Okonomiyaki (a kind of savory pancake) and takoyaki (battered chunks of octopus). Niigata? The koshihikari rice variety. Kyushu? Hakata ramen. Shikoku? Udon noodles and oranges. The list could go on and on, but the takeaway is simple: very little is more important than food in Japan.

Street food stalls selling takoyaki—battered chunks of octopus that get lathered in a gooey soy-based sauce and mayo, and then topped with fish flakes.

Kaiseki ryori, the ultimate in Japanese cuisine. You can drop several hundred dollars per person at the best kaiseki restaurants, but good versions can be found much cheaper as part of a stay in a traditional Japanese ryokan.

Pickles on display at Kyoto’s Nishiki Market, a must-stop on any foodie’s trip to Kyoto.

Tofu comes in many different textures and is served in a variety of ways. Try it as part of a shojin ryori vegetarian meal and you’ll very possibly shed any notion of it being the dull health food it’s too often considered in the West.

Okonomiyaki, the savory pancake-like dish that’s found all over but is a specialty in Osaka and Hiroshima. A mix of diced cabbage, batter, eggs and anything else you might want to add (pork and kimchi is a great option!), diners cook it themselves on hotplates built into the table.

A teppanyaki restaurant, where the chefs display expert knife skills and flair in cooking the meat, seafood and vegetables in front of you.

Check out the lanterns outside an izakaya and they often tell you what kind of food is inside to go with the beer and sake. This one advertises kushikatsu (deep-fried skewered meat) and yakisoba (fried noodles) among other things.

Sushi is the most famous of Japanese foods. You could easily drop $300 at a top sushi restaurant in somewhere like Ginza or you could binge on a budget at a revolving train sushi bar (kaitenzushi). Even the cheapest options tend to be good, even if it’s a ¥500 supermarket sushi bento.

Thanks to some stellar marketing Kobe beef gets all the plaudits overseas, but in Japan it’s just one of dozens of highly rated wagyu beef brands. Aficionados tend to rate Kobe-gyu, Matsuzaka-gyu (Mie Prefecture) and Ohmi-gyu (Shiga Prefecture) as the top three, but also look out for Yonezawa-gyu, Hitachi-gyu, and Kyoto-gyu amongst others.

Ramen is cheap, ubiquitous and much loved. There are numerous regional variations, too, from the miso-based Sapporo ramen to the pork bone broth-based Hakata ramen. Regardless of variety, a quick way to tell if a place is good or not—the length of the queue.

Yakitori (grilled chicken on skewers) is one of those Japanese foods that can be pricey or cheap, served in plush surrounds or chargrilled in backstreet stalls. Either way, it’s a must-try.

Even the cheapest of soba noodle stands are worth a try. For as little as ¥300, you can get a hot bowl of noodles topped with a veggie tempura—perfect for a quick bite on the go, which is why you’ll often find them in and around stations, sometimes standing only.

JAPAN’S COLORFUL MATSURI

A Panoply of Extraordinary Festivals and Celebrations

Japan’s myriad festivals mark the changing of seasons and rites of passage, they light up summer skies and add moments of warmth to harsh winters, bring communities together and keep traditions alive. They are so deeply interwoven into Japanese society that whatever time of year you might visit Japan and whichever part of the country you find yourself in, there’s a strong chance that a festival (or matsuri to use the Japanese word) of some kind or other will be taking place nearby.

Come to Japan in spring and the most obvious events will be the cherry-blossom parties (called hanami; literally, “flower viewing”) that follow the annual wave of sakura (cherry blossom) northward across the country, with the whole of Japan seemingly welcoming spring with picnics and parties under the delicate pink blossoms. With blossoms soon turning brown on the ground and spring starting to give way to summer, the number of festivals increases. To pluck out a few of the annual highlights, there’s the Sanja Matsuri in May in Tokyo’s Asakusa, where amid huge crowds frenzied groups of bearers carry highly decorative portable shrines through streets in honor of the seventh-century founders of Sensoji Temple. Or for a couple more with deep historical roots, there’s the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto in July with its processions of floats and people in period dress, and in the sweltering heat of mid-August Tokushima’s Awa Odori, which sees dance troupes clad in colorful traditional costumes prance and shout day and night to a pulsating accompaniment of shamisen, flute, bells and drums, attracting in excess of a million visitors to the city over three days.

More than anything, however, across Japan high summer is fireworks season, with events like Tokyo’s Sumida River Fireworks Festival illuminating the sky and bringing the streets to life with a mixture of colorful street stalls selling festival staples like yakisoba (fried noodles), yakitori (chicken skewers) and kakigori (shaved ice), not to mention the brightly patterned cotton yukata summer kimono worn by many of the onlookers.

In autumn, some of the best festivals are connected to major shrines, with traditional parades and displays of horseback archery taking place in Kamakura and Nikko as part of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine’s and Toshogu Shrine’s seasonal celebrations. Then comes winter, when almost the entire nation welcomes in the new year with shrine visits and the northern regions come in to their own with snow and ice festivals, the most famous of which sees Sapporo in Hokkaido (page 132) transformed into an outdoor gallery of giant ice sculptures at the Snow Festival in February. And with that we’ve only just touched tip of the matsuri iceberg.

The Jidai Matsuri in October sees Kyoto turn the clock back with processions in period costumes.

The Aoi Matsuri in Kyoto sees decorated furyugasa umbrellas being paraded.

Visit Japan in late March or early April for the best Japanese celebration of them all: hanami (cherry blossom viewing). The pink blossoms only stay for a couple of weeks, with their spectacular peak lasting just days, but send Japan into a frenzy of celebrations.

The Yayoi Festival celebrated in April in Nikko. Dating to the late 700s, the annual event welcomes in spring, with the highlight being a parade of eleven of these decorative floats.

Japan also welcomes events from other cultures, such as the annual Asakusa Samba Festival.

Watch a sumo tournament when in Japan if you can. There are six taking place every odd month of the year. The most expensive (and possibly most dangerous) are the ringside seats, where wrestlers may collide into the spectators.

It doesn’t really matter what the occasion—Coming of Age Day in January or a summer fireworks display—you see people in colorful kimono or yukata at many of Japan’s festivals.

As part of the Ohara Hadaka Matsuri in Chiba Prefecture, locals carry portable shrines into the sea to pray for bumper fishing catches. The word hadaka means “naked”, which generally means little more than loin cloths for those taking part.

A maiko (trainee geisha) taking part in the Hanagasa parade at the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto, which is held every July.

The Ohara Matsuri dance festival in Kagoshima every November attracts ten thousand dancers, like these here performing Okinawan dances.

A monk walks on coals at the Fire-Walking Festival in Miyajima. Similar events are held around Japan, including a major one on Mount Takao in Tokyo on the second Sunday of March where onlookers can walk the coals themselves.

The Oniyarai Shinji Festival is part of the annual setsubun festivities that mark winter’s end. To ward off evil and welcome in good, people throw beans at demons, shouting “Oni wa soto” (Demons out!).

A spring festival at Daigoji Temple in Kyoto celebrates cherry blossom season and commemorates shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had seven hundred cherry blossom trees planted here in the late 1500s.

The highlight of Fukuoka’s Hakata Gion Yamakasa Festival in July sees groups of men charging around the streets carrying 1-ton decorative floats.

RYOKAN AND ONSEN

An Unforgettable Night at a Traditional Inn or Hot Spring

More than simply places to sleep or bases from which to explore, Japan’s traditional forms of accommodation represent a chance to go deeper into Japan’s multiple cultural layers.

Take the ryokan, the traditional Japanese inn, which ranges from modest, family-run affairs to refined five-star luxury, but at its heart shares several core traits. Firstly, a typical stay here means a night sleeping on a futon in a tatami-mat room furnished with low table and defined by traditional design elements that include paper screen doors and calligraphy wall hangings. Then there is the food, usually a stomach-busting multi-dish breakfast that includes rice, fish, pickles and soup, but more importantly a multi-course dinner based around seasonal local produce that’s served on fine ceramics and lacquerware like a succession of miniature art works. On top of that, most ryokan also feature communal onsen (hot spring baths), sometimes inside, sometimes out, sometimes both, which add a soothing touch of pampering. All that, of course, would merely be window dressing if it weren’t for the level of hospitality and attentive service that usually comes with it—although despite rose-tinted reputation, it has to be said that Japan can do inhospitable and poor service, too, especially if you run into someone who behind the smile is terrified of or just plain dislikes foreigners!

Away from the ryokan come variations on the theme. Minshuku are a homely version of ryokan (like a B&B), without the formal level of service that comes with a ryokan, but in many respects even warmer for it. Then shukubo offer another twist, this time provided on temple grounds and typically being a more Spartan version of a ryokan, with the vegetarian cuisine eaten by monks on the menu and service functional but friendly. Better yet, shukubo offer opportunities to get a deeper look at spiritual Japan, not just by staying in the tranquil surrounds of a temple, but by being able to observe and take part in the temple’s morning rituals.

Dining at a ryokan is a special experience in and of itself. Taking a couple of hours, the kaiseki dinner generally features beautifully presented dish after dish that utilize regional and seasonal produce. Breakfast, too, can be a big affair, combining rice, fish, pickles, eggs, soup, salad, and plenty more.

Soaking in a piping-hot onsen (hot-spring bath) is one of the key attractions at most ryokan. Many ryokan will have a mix of indoor and outdoor gender-separated baths (although some still have mixed gender), where the mineral-rich water is said to alleviate not just fatigue but many other ailments. To bath correctly, you just need to remember a few rules: wash and rinse thoroughly by the low showers before getting in the communal water, and make sure you are completely naked.

Ryokan come in a variety of styles, from swanky contemporary to former samurai houses, but this is the classic guest-room design—a mix of tatami, low table, paper screen doors and views out to nature.

Okami is the term given to the proprietress or manageress of a ryokan. She will be there to greet you upon arrival, and she oversees the staff as they look after you during your stay. In smaller ryokan, she might even be more hands-on, helping to serve the lavish multi-course meals in your room.