Things worth doing

Stay somewhere that is itself the point

Walk something old

The Nakasendo: Magome to Tsumago

Eight kilometres of preserved Edo highway between two preserved post towns, over a low pass, with bear bells to ring on the way. Two to three hours, well signposted in English, and luggage forwarding between the towns runs daily in season. The single best short walk in Japan for a sense of the past.

The Kumano Kodo

A network of pilgrimage routes through the Kii peninsula, in use for over a thousand years and UNESCO-listed alongside the Camino de Santiago. The Nakahechi route takes three to five days between mountain villages, with the Nachi waterfall — 133 metres, itself the object of worship — at the eastern end.

The Shikoku 88

The full circuit is 1,200 kilometres and six to eight weeks on foot. Most people do a section; temples 1–11 in Tokushima make a manageable two or three days on flat ground, with the white-clad henro for company.

Kamikochi and the Northern Alps

A high valley closed to private cars, with the Azusa river running clear over gravel under 3,000-metre peaks. Flat river walks for a day visit; serious multi-day hut-to-hut traverses for those equipped. Open roughly mid-April to mid-November.

Mount Fuji, if you must

The climbing season is short — roughly early July to early September — and the mountain is a slog of volcanic scree, not a scenic walk. Entry fees, daily numbers caps and overnight-climbing restrictions now apply and have been changing year to year, so check the official prefectural pages before committing. A Japanese proverb holds that a wise man climbs Fuji once and only a fool climbs it twice. Consider Mount Takao, or the Fuji Five Lakes, and look at it instead.

Get in the water

Japan has more than 25,000 hot spring sources, a consequence of sitting on four tectonic plates. Bathing is the national leisure activity and the etiquette is simple: wash thoroughly seated at the taps first, no swimwear, no towel in the water, no splashing, tie long hair up.

• Kinosaki Onsen — a canal town where guests walk between seven public bathhouses in yukata and wooden sandals. The most enjoyable onsen town to be in, as opposed to just to bathe in.
• Kurokawa Onsen, Kyushu — a wooden village in a gorge; one pass gets you into three outdoor baths of your choosing.
• Nyuto Onsen, Akita — milky sulphur water at Tsurunoyu, a 350-year-old inn with a mixed outdoor bath, magnificent under snow.
• Takaragawa, Gunma — enormous riverside pools. Ginzan, Yamagata — gas-lit Taisho-era street, extraordinary in winter.
• Sento, the neighbourhood public bath, is the everyday version and costs a few hundred yen. Tokyo has hundreds; many are architecturally wonderful and quietly disappearing.

Watch something

Look at art in strange places

• Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima — former industrial islands in the Inland Sea rebuilt around contemporary art. Tadao Ando's buried Chichu Art Museum, the Benesse House you can sleep inside, the Art House Projects in old village homes, and Teshima's single-work museum, a concrete shell with water moving across the floor. The Setouchi Triennale expands it enormously in its years.
• The 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa — circular, free to walk through, with Leandro Erlich's swimming pool.
• Hakone Open-Air Museum — sculpture on a hillside, with a hot-spring foot bath in the middle of it.
• teamLab in Tokyo — digital immersive installations, genuinely well made. Book in advance; venues have moved and changed, so confirm the current site.
• Nezu Museum, Tokyo — pre-modern art in a Kengo Kuma building with one of the best small gardens in the city.

Eat deliberately

• A department store depachika in the last hour before closing, when the prepared food is discounted and the sampling is generous.
• A yatai stall in Fukuoka — open-air, canvas-sided, a dozen stools, ramen and beer by the river.
• Standing sushi (tachigui) — excellent fish, no ceremony, no booking, a fraction of the price of the sit-down equivalent.
• A kissaten — the old-style coffee house, dark wood, siphon brewing, thick-cut toast, jazz on vinyl, and no expectation that you leave.
• Convenience stores. This is not a joke. 7-Eleven, Lawson and FamilyMart food is genuinely good and will feed you well at 3am on a train platform.
• An izakaya on a weeknight — small dishes, a lot of them, beer or sake, and the most sociable form of eating in the country.

Ride the trains as an attraction

The Shinkansen is a transport system with a punctuality record measured in seconds, but several lines are worth taking for their own sake. The Gono Line along the Sea of Japan coast in Tohoku, the Hisatsu Line switchbacks in Kyushu, the Kurobe Gorge open-sided railway in Toyama, and the Sagano Romantic Train at Arashiyama all sell the view rather than the destination. The Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route crosses the Alps by cable car, trolleybus and ropeway, and in April and May runs between snow walls up to twenty metres high.