Travel guides to help you plan your trip to the biggest and most visited cities in Japan
I had just dropped off my bags at my hotel in downtown Kanazawa when I made a beeline for Nagamachi District. I had a fascination for swords and samurais as a kid so seeing an actual samurai district topped my to-do list in Kanazawa. It was grey and rainy that winter morning so my initial … Read more
Hiroshima surprised me. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did. I had visited Nagasaki a few years before my first trip to Hiroshima. Because of their shared histories, I expected a similar feeling of heaviness from Hiroshima, a sense of joylessness often felt in places with dark histories. But that wasn’t … Read more
I was on a press trip to the Chubu region a few years ago when one of our Japanese guides said “there’s nothing in Nagoya”. I understood what she meant, I had heard it before, though I didn’t agree with her. Before my first trip to Nagoya, I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about visiting this metropolis … Read more
Nagasaki is a strange city. It’s strange in the sense that in many ways, it feels very “un-Japanese”. For one, it doesn’t seem to have the quirks that make Japan the endearingly eccentric country that it is. Things like giant mechanized robots and oddball restaurant concepts are nowhere to be found here. There’s no hi-tech … Read more
I didn’t know what to make of Fukuoka at first. It’s a bit sterile in feel and lacking in the cultural attractions you’d expect from old Japan. Compared to more popular cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, and even Osaka, it felt more like a stopover, an entry point into Kyushu en route to more interesting destinations … Read more
I don’t keep count but I’ve probably taken close to a dozen trips to Japan by now. I’ve explored many cities from Kyushu to Hokkaido but Osaka remains one of my favorites. It’s the first city I visited as a hobby blogger and is mostly to blame for my incurable obsession with Japan (and travel … Read more