“It’s come pretty much out of nowhere,” says British Museum curator Tim Clark, placing a small wooden box on the table — it’s about the dimensions of a shoebox, slightly weathered and lightly inscribed with fluid kanji characters. “It was in Japan until last ...

If you’re considering trekking Mount Fuji this year, look sharp — just four weeks remain of the official open season. But if you’re making last-minute plans for an ascent of those conical 3,776 meters, think carefully about what you’re taking on. Unless, that is, ...

British writer, historian and journalist Lesley Downer has been visiting Japan and writing about it for nearly 35 years — beginning in 1978, when she was part of the first-ever intake of the English Teaching Recruitment Program, which evolved into the famous JET (Japan ...

Everest may be its most famous site, and Lumbini one of its holiest, but Nepal has plenty more to offer. Annapurna is the country’s other great trekking location, while Chitwan National Park is home to some of the region’s rarest wildlife, offering the chance ...

It’s a pilgrimage site, a UNESCO World Heritage site — and a building site. Lumbini in southern Nepal, less than 10 km from the Indian border, should be a name as familiar as Jerusalem, Bethlehem or Mecca, the holy places of Judaism, Christianity and ...

Japan has had a tumultuous, and at times controversial relationship with Mount Everest. Its history features the first woman summiteer, a heated race to claim the crown of oldest person to the top, a disastrous early expedition — and one of the mountain’s most ...

I always keep a journal when I travel, but something’s different about the one open in front of me now — the notebook in which I was writing just a few weeks ago. My normally smooth script has deteriorated into a scrawl, the black ...

In fewer than 100 days time, athletes and spectators from around the world will be pouring into London to fill the great steel and concrete “O” of the Olympic Stadium. But there’s another major venue that is already welcoming international audiences and stars — ...

LONDON — Nyotaimori — aka “female body arrangement” aka “naked sushi,” in which the food is eaten from the nude body of a beautiful woman — is as much legend as fact in Japan (see accompanying article). But that hasn’t stopped the Western imagination ...

When she looked at the floor plans for Oxford’s redesigned Ashmolean Museum and saw that her two Japanese galleries formed an L-shape in one corner of the building, curator Clare Pollard didn’t see an awkward space. “I saw a tea-house,” she explains. And there ...