Crossing Enoshima Benten Bridge to Enoshima Island in Sagami Bay, 80 km south of Tokyo, I was stopped in my tracks by a pair of mustard-eyed dragons slithering down gray granite lanterns. A man dismounted his bicycle and asked if I needed help. No, ...

Today, most visitors to Kamakura reach the former shogun's capital by rail. But the railway was not blasted through hills until 1889, and in shogunal days travelers arrived via the seven kiridoshi, passes cut through hills as entrances to the city. Deciding to enter ...

Behind the front desk of the Nikko Kanaya Hotel hang photos of an unlikely trio: James Curtis Hepburn, Isabella Bird and Zenichiro Kanaya. Hotel President Takayasu Akiyama connected the dots over a cup of java in the Maple Leaf Lounge. Zenichiro was a ninth-generation ...

I was looking for a pillbox pockmarked with bullet holes in the Kudanminami district of Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo. That's what an elderly friend told me I'd find in front of the area's Kudan Kaikan hotel. He used the Russian loan-word "tochika" for pillbox and Kudan ...

The escalator at the Keikyu Line's Misakiguchi Station transported me to a windswept hilltop where a booth provided information on places to pick mikan (tangerines) and shops sold tuna, toasted laver bread and horse mackerel seasoned with mirin (a rice wine). I boarded a ...

Ochanomizu, the Tokyo neighborhood stretching from Yushima, Bunkyo Ward, to Kanda, Chiyoda Ward, gives good vibes. Jazz, rock and reggae spill from music stores and guitar shops lining Meiji-dori as it drops south toward Yasukuni-dori. Mid-slope is Meiji University's Liberty Tower, where one drizzly ...

The symmetrical beauty of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine, the meditative colossus of Kotokuin, and the Zen-inspired splendors of Kenchoji and Enkakuji may win Kamakura inscription on the World Heritage List. Comparatively unknown are its Western-style buildings constructed after Kamakura became accessible from Tokyo by rail ...

Urban planning can be a zero-sum game. A case in point is Yokohama. The city redeveloped the waterfront to create Minato Mirai (Port of the Future), where visitors shop in boutiques, revolve on a Ferris wheel and whoosh in one of the world's fastest ...

In mid-April, Karuizawa is quiet but for the buzz of saws and taps of hammers readying shops for the tourist season. Many shops, few of which rise higher than two stories, remain shuttered until then, and the streetscape surprises after the lofty skylines of ...