The old post road on foot, a samurai city, a temple dawn and an island that turned itself into art, Japan with the volume turned down.
Into the world's largest, most precise city. After the flight we keep it loose, a neighbourhood dinner, a first konbini breakfast haul, an early night against the jet lag. Tokyo is best met with a clear head.
The city in its two registers: a 7 a.m. shrine in near silence, the tuna and tamago of Toyosu market, then the full neon blast of Shibuya and a tucked away counter where the chef decides your dinner. We pace it so the contrasts land.
Glide across Honshu on the Hokuriku Shinkansen (about three hours) to Kanazawa, a castle town the war never reached. This afternoon: Kenrokuen, one of Japan's three great gardens, and the wooden, lantern lit lanes of the Higashi Chaya geisha district.
Omicho market for breakfast crab, the earthen walled samurai quarter of Nagamachi, gold leaf workshops (the city makes nearly all of Japan's), and the mirror and light 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art. An old city that wears its art lightly.
Today you step off the timetable. We route you into the Kiso Valley and onto the Nakasendo, the Edo era highway between Kyoto and Tokyo, to walk the preserved miles from Magome to Tsumago: cedar forest, waterfalls, post towns frozen in the 1800s. Night in a wooden ryokan, kaiseki dinner, hot spring soak, futon on tatami.
A slow morning in the post town before the trains carry you to Kyoto (about two and a half hours via Nagoya), the thousand year capital. The afternoon eases you in, a first temple, a riverside walk in Pontocho as the lanterns wake up.
We chase the light, not the crowds: the Arashiyama bamboo grove at dawn, the vermilion tunnel of ten thousand gates at Fushimi Inari, the old wooden lanes of Higashiyama toward Kiyomizu before the tour buses arrive. An afternoon to slow back down.
A day chosen for stillness over fame, a moss garden, a Zen rock garden, a proper tea ceremony, the food stalls of Nishiki market. As dusk falls, the lantern lit stone lanes of Gion, where if you're lucky a geiko hurries to an appointment.
Trains and a ferry (about three and a half hours, via Okayama) carry you to Naoshima, an island in the Seto Inland Sea remade as a single work of art. Tadao Ando's buried Chichu museum, Monet underground, Yayoi Kusama's yellow pumpkin on the pier. You sleep inside the museum itself.
The Art House Project in the old village, one more walk by the sea, then the ferry and trains back toward your flight. Japan ends the way it ran, exactly on time, and nothing like you expected.
Three ways to do the same route: Comfort, Premium or Luxe. Breakfasts in. Mix tiers city by city if you like, it is your trip.
Priced to your dates, your hotel tier and how the two of you like to travel. Ask, the first answer usually lands within minutes.
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