Part guesthouse and tour provider and part culture and cooking class, Udon House is a full-immersion experience where guests learn about the Sanuki region where udon noodles were born.

At her restaurant, Nanakusa, and now for Finnair, Maezawa adjusts traditional Edo Period Japanese flavors for an international audience by using familiar aromas from herbs and spices to evoke dishes guests may already know.

While living in Japan, I spent languid summers watching Koshien on television. I'd rise before the first game and pour cold mugicha (barley tea) as cicadas hummed outside my open windows. It's the sounds I remember most. The chatter of the announcers punctuated by aluminum bat ...

Shima Peninsula may be most famous for pearls, but the true treasure is its bountiful natural environment and a plateful of fresh oysters.

In Mie Prefecture, the city of Matsusaka celebrates its animal husbandry with a cattle auction each November.

Naturalist Minakata Kumagusu's home prefecture offers much more than a scenic retreat.

Approaching the house of 80-year-old Akiko Ishigaki, a three-legged dog rises to signal our arrival. From inside the house, Ishigaki gently scolds the dog, emerges from the doorway and invites us in. She's dressed in layers of woven purple cloth and her face maintains the ...

For much of its history Tokyo was known as city of water. Like Venice or Bangkok, canals were the arteries of commerce, and life was lived in close proximity to rivers and creeks. But that legacy was, for the most part, hidden under concrete ...

Shigeo Ota spends six days a week behind the counter of his cafe, Aroma, watching TV and waiting for customers who rarely come. The cafe is in Komagome, a town in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward, close the quiet neighborhoods of Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi (collectively ...

Craftsmen from two regional factories — one makes miso; the other, shoyu — ponder the future of their little town and its centuries-old traditions