Plan Your Trip to Japan

Featured in our Wish List in the December 2009 issue of ISLANDS magazine (on newsstands November 16), Japan fascinates with the intricacy and variety of its culture, landscapes and food.

FLY Japan Airlines from Chicago or New York, or numerous U.S. airlines from numerous other hubs, to Tokyo. Then ride the Shinkansen network of high-speed trains to the reaches of the country, from Tokyo to Japan’s second city, Osaka, for example. Speeds approaching 200 mph redefine “island time.” It’s like the future, if we’re lucky.

STAY at Hotel Seiyo-Ginza to experience detail-oriented Japanese service. The hotel claims to offer “the most spacious baths in Japan.” That’s hard to verify, but this isn’t the infamous “capsule hotel” where guests (often “salarymen” on business trips) sleep in hives of pods. To test-rest that oddly Japanese phenomenon or just see what a sleeping pod looks like, visit Capsule Inn in Akihabara, Tokyo’s throbbing epicenter of oddities.

EAT in Japan’s kaiseki food tradition, which takes presentation, local sourcing and seasonality to extremes. Try it at Kikunoi restaurant in Kyoto. Visitors may recognize fine attention to detail from sushi preparation they’ve seen, but Chef Yoshihiro Murata goes that extra millimeter.

CLIMB Mount Fuji. Many Japanese people make an annual trek up the sacred mountain, climbing through a sequence of stations in a ritual both spiritual and athletic.

SLOW DOWN Timeless Japan takes time. Tokyo alone has a dozen districts each worth a week. Kyoto is another world. And so on. The infinite layers of Japanese culture reward investigation.

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