Every spring, as the wave of blossoms sweeps up the archipelago from south to north, washing up from the coasts into the higher altitudes, travelers flood into Japan. Rivaled only by the cool autumn months that redden maple leaves across the country, March and ...

OXFORD, England — When the offshore Tohoku mega-quake caused tsunami to slam ashore on March 11, crippling the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, Japan was figuratively as well as literally shaken. In the disaster zone, communities and families were literally torn apart. In less-stricken areas ...

Sometimes I'm not even sure we were there at all. Distance and time often give perspective and clarity, but now when I try to call that day to mind, everything is obscured by a thickening curtain of falling snow. Our train pulled into the station ...

Tsumago is, indisputably, a charming place. Low mountains swing the former post-town's main street around in a curve of weathered wooden houses, backdropping the scene with the dark green of the firs that cloak the hills. Along this section of the old Nakasendo road that, ...

It was November, and the leaves were ocher on the trees swathing the hills behind the reconstructed wooden buildings. Gaggles of chattering exchange students ducked in and out of the faux historical shops and houses, obviously enjoying themselves and their day out. The odd little ...

We first stepped off the train at Matsumoto Station several years ago. It was August and the ripening rice paddies tinted the surrounding farmland chartreuse. Conifers darkened the distant hills. We were greeted by the eerie, long announcement that makes the station famous. "Matsumotoooo, ...

High in the Northern Alps of Japan there are snowfields in August. Up above the tree line, wherever the bare geology dips into cirques, thick blankets of dirty white stretch out between the peaks and jagged ridges like caught clouds. In summer, these mountains are ...

In 1988 I was an awkward, dreamy kid with clumsy elbows and scraped knees, and Japan was a place I'd never even thought about. Impossibly far away and altogether foreign, it seemed fantastical. I had no idea back then that as an adult I'd keep ...

Outside the car windows the landscape was a textured patchwork: winter orchards, rice paddies and tile-roofed farmhouses all stitched together by the threads of narrow roads. I kept one eye on the way ahead, but the other was caught by the repeating monochrome pattern of ...

On the edge of town, by a bridge over a stream amid fields of rice stubble, there is a roughly hewn stone Buddha. The path to it is well worn, and though someone has left an offering of the last of the season's quinces ...