Tours in Japan

Start in a doorway. In Japan you will take your shoes off more often than you expect, and you will learn to do it without thinking: step up, turn, set them straight. It is a small habit, and it tells you how the country works. Care is placed in the details, and the details are rarely shouted about.

The country is long, and it changes as you move through it. Hokkaido in the north is wide, cold and open, with ski towns and farmland. Honshu holds most of what first-time visitors come for. Tokyo is a hundred different neighbourhoods stitched together by train lines, where you can eat superbly at a counter with eight seats and cross Shibuya in a crowd that somehow never collides. Osaka is louder and hungrier, a city that argues about takoyaki. Hiroshima asks for a quiet afternoon. Nara has deer that will follow you for crackers. Further south, Kyushu and Okinawa feel like different countries, warmer and slower.

Kyoto is where we would have you slow down. Fushimi Inari, Kinkakuji, Kiyomizudera and the lanes of Gion are every first itinerary, and they deserve it. But the city is also made of ordinary wooden townhouses, machiya, with narrow fronts and long interiors that run back to a small garden you cannot see from the street. Go inside one and sit on the tatami. Someone whisks a bowl of matcha, turns it toward you, and you learn there is a right way to receive it and a reason behind each gesture. Tea is the quickest way into how Japan thinks about hospitality, and an hour is enough to feel it.

Want to see somewhere we do not list yet, such as Himeji Castle, the temples of Nikko, or the Kumano Kodo trails? Ask. A local guide can build a day around it.