Japan

A sumo tournament fills a stadium with twelve thousand people, a brass band, and a ceremonial…

The first time I did Tokyo to Kyoto as a day trip, I pinned seven sights…

So you’ve landed at Haneda, your luggage is coming down the belt, and in about fifteen…

You will leave a good Kyoto cooking class with something most food experiences do not give…

The first thing you notice is the quiet. You’ve climbed a narrow staircase above a clothing…

The guide was already moving when I caught up. She’d pointed at the dome across the…

A Swedish mum I met on the Yurikamome line told me she’d booked a ninja class…

The rickshaw is Japanese. People forget that. It was invented in Tokyo around 1869, and within…

So you want to sit through a proper Japanese tea ceremony in Tokyo — but how…

Book a private tour in Tokyo and you are paying for a guide who will walk…

I booked the wrong kind of samurai experience first. It was a cheap thirty-minute armor-dress-up at…

The helmet is on, the engine is humming, and the guide has just told me to…

The woman tying my obi pauses mid-wrap, shakes her head, and starts again from the beginning….

My friend Hannah flew into Haneda at noon, dumped her bag at her Asakusa hotel, and…

Here’s a thing I didn’t know until I booked my first matcha class: a granite stone…

You step out of the rental shop onto the Gion flagstones and the first thing you…

A full-day coach tour locks you into a fixed Shibuya stop at 14:00 — the bus…

You’re looking at Kyoto, weighing a 2,000-yen hop-on bus day pass against a 40,000-yen-plus private guide,…

On day one in Tokyo, jet-lagged and excited, a lot of first-timers try to hit Shibuya…

The public Toei bus costs 210 yen a ride and drops you where the schedule says,…

The bar seats five, and one of them just became yours because the man next to…

Stand at the Ebisubashi bend in Dotonbori on a humid evening and the canal throws three…

The pocket watch in the museum case stopped at 8:15. The wearer, a boy of thirteen,…

First time I tried making sushi at home, my rice came out like cement and my…