It’s a clear spring morning and the view over Suruga Bay just outside of Shizuoka City is captivating. At least, that’s what my travel companions say. As our car hugs the coastal road known as Ichigo Kaigan-dori, my husband and our friends are admiring ...

The Eizan Electric Railway serves a sparsely traveled route — or so I infer from the dinky two-carriage train we board shortly before it lurches out of the terminus at Demachiyanagi Station in Kyoto heading for the mountains on the city’s northeastern outskirts. Certainly, ...

I’m normally intolerant of Sunday drivers, but as our little car winds its way up the two-lane coastal roads of eastern Okinawa Island, I find myself pleasantly inclined to just that kind of unhurried progress. The motorcycle riders who have suddenly appeared in our ...

It’s no secret what the cash crop of Shizuoka Prefecture is: tea. Green and generally reckoned to be healthful, this brew has fueled Japan for close on 1,500 years since being introduced from the Asian mainland. Now, as my Hamamatsu-bound train winds its way ...

The bride in the garden is a vision in white, her snowy dress contrasting sharply with the brilliant purple of the irises around her. “Beautiful!” sighs the gaggle of Japanese women around me, with that classic, high-pitched exhalation of breath and wistful looks in ...

The air is stifling in the cement interior of the Ishikawa Dome, despite the sides being open to the weather. I shift my limbs, in danger of losing circulation on the unforgiving benches, while my right arm furiously works my paper program as a ...

The green and white taxis are lined up outside Katsunuma-Budokyo Station like the stripes on a holiday peppermint stick. I readjust the contents of my daypack after the 90-minute train trip from Tokyo, take out my map, and hop into the back of the ...

The windmill is the first thing I notice, its delicate white blades gleaming against the cloud- flecked sky. Nearby, a semi-circle of polished Doric-style columns occupies prime position overlooking the glassy sea. As a breeze blows gently through olive trees on the shady hillside, ...

It’s Saturday morning and I’m sitting on the beach, struggling to strap on a pair of oversize flippers. When they are securely in place, I waddle down to the water’s edge and gingerly step into the sparkling, crystal ocean lapping Miyake Island. “Ready to ...

The lump of dough in the large mixing bowl in front of me doesn’t look like much, but soba-making instructor Hatuko Tokutake isn’t concerned. “You have to knead it at least 150 times,” she coaches me, confident in her 10 years experience as a ...

Gold may be heavier than water, but all that’s rattling around the bottom of my panning bowl are lots of multicolored pebbles. “Slowly, very slowly, or you’ll shake the gold out,” says my instructor Noriko Yamamoto, a seven-year employee of Toi Kinzan, a restored ...