Combining Kamakura and Enoshima in one day sounds ambitious until you look at a map. Then it looks almost too easy. The two places sit along the same stretch of coast, the Enoden railway links them, and both are close enough to Tokyo that you can be back in the city for dinner. It is … Read more
Enoshima looks almost too small to justify an entire day. From the mainland, it is a compact green island sitting just offshore, joined to the coast by a pedestrian bridge. You can see the lighthouse rising above the trees. Tokyo is only about an hour away. It seems straightforward. Cross the bridge. Walk around. Have … Read more
Kamakura is often described as an easy escape from Tokyo. That description is accurate, but it undersells the place. Less than an hour after leaving central Tokyo, the dense city gives way to a coastal town built around old temples, wooded hills, narrow streets and one enormous bronze Buddha that has been sitting outdoors for … Read more
Most first-time Osaka trips don’t involve hiking through a forest. They’re spent around Dotonbori, Namba, Osaka Castle, Shinsekai and Umeda, with neon signs, restaurants and train stations never very far away. Hiraoka Park feels very different. Head east towards the foot of Mt Ikoma and Osaka begins to fall away beneath you. The streets become … Read more
There are plenty of places in Akihabara where you can buy an old Game Boy. MOD TOKYO lets you take one apart. For around two hours, you’re given a genuine vintage Nintendo handheld, a set of tools and a choice of replacement parts. You open the console, remove the old hardware, choose a new shell … Read more
There’s a point during almost every Tokyo Disney trip when IKSPIARI suddenly becomes useful. Maybe you’ve arrived at Maihama hours before your hotel room is ready. Maybe everyone wants dinner but you don’t want another theme-park meal. Maybe you’re staying around Tokyo Disney Resort but don’t have a park ticket that day. Or perhaps you’ve … Read more
Tokyo is getting another anime experience in October, but this one is difficult to put into the usual categories. Animmersive Live: LAYRA inspired by BELLE isn’t an exhibition, movie screening or conventional stage musical. Instead, it takes the virtual world of Mamoru Hosoda’s anime film BELLE and attempts to turn it into a real live … Read more
You do not need to rent a car to visit Gokayama. In fact, for many international visitors, I’d recommend: not renting one at all. Gokayama’s two UNESCO villages: Ainokura and: Suganuma are connected to the wider region by the: World Heritage Bus. That bus creates an extremely useful public-transport corridor: Takaoka ↓ Shin-Takaoka ↓ Johana … Read more
Gokayama is beautiful throughout the year. But winter is when it looks like: the Gokayama you’ve probably seen in photographs. Deep snow. Steep thatched roofs. Tiny mountain villages. Smoke rising from traditional houses. And gassho-zukuri farmhouses surrounded by: white mountains. Gokayama is one of Japan’s heaviest-snowfall inhabited regions, and winter completely transforms its two UNESCO … Read more
You can visit Gokayama’s traditional gassho-zukuri villages in a few hours. But there’s another way to experience them: sleep inside one. In Ainokura, several centuries-old gassho-zukuri farmhouses still operate as tiny family-run: minshuku. Instead of returning to Toyama, Kanazawa or Takayama at the end of the day, you can: sleep on a futon ↓ inside … Read more