The region, broadly stretching from Lake Chuzenji to the south to Lake Yunoko to the north, has an intense concentration of distinct landscapes. There are multiple tick-the-box, picture-perfect foliage scenes, earning high rankings in this country fond of grading its beauties.

But much wilder, not-fit-for-postcards landscapes sit right next to that predictable beauty, ensuring that even if the visual experience can feel cliché at times, the emotional side never does.

There are several waterfalls, including one of Japan’s three most beautiful; two marshlands, one smaller, more intimate, the other four times bigger; two lakes, again, one smaller, more approachable, and the other spreading widely between the surrounding mountains; and narrow forest trails connect it all with ponds scattered in between.

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Every year, right around mid-October, I visit the area for a one-night, one-day stay.

Some years, the weekend, peak colors, and sunny skies come together; other years, a misty mood defines the experience, with all-night, all-day rain. The least exciting years are when there is neither, and the best are when I get a little bit of everything.

In service of my habit-obsessed soul, I stay at the same little inn overlooking Lake Chuzenji, have coffee at the same cafe, and eat dinner at the same French bistro. So, not much novelty there.

By October, evenings and mornings already feel chilly up at this altitude, reminding you that autumn is definitely here, if not a very early winter in some years.

The day starts early, with the first bus out to Lake Yunoko, where I start the walk, which takes me back to Chuzenji sometimes in half a day, sometimes much longer.

Early mornings are usually calmer, with less wind, increasing the chance of witnessing the mirror scene Lake Yunoko is famous for (like any other mountain-surrounded lake).

If conditions align, the semi-turquoise waters of Lake Yunoko reflect the surrounding mountains, sparsely dotted with autumn colors, with a boathouse strategically sitting right in the middle, as if to improve the postcard-worthiness of the scenery.

Despite underplaying the beauty of this area to save my enthusiasm for what lies ahead, I of course still spend at least an hour by the lake, take hundreds of photos, and happily join the chorus of other morning visitors loudly admiring the scenery.

The morning starts with a rather iconic scene, but it is far from the visual crescendo of the hike for me. The many layers of Oku-Nikko start to unfold after this point, with something new almost at every turn all the way until Chuzenji.

Two narrow trails circle the lake on both sides, leading to a small lakeside beach on the far side. I usually take the left route as it is a little more open, with less obstructed views of the lake.

There is a maple tree along the way - the perfect marker to tell whether the region is at peak foliage or past it. If it is at its peak, with its branches spread over the lake, showing off its perfectly red leaves, it is impossible not to notice.

But if it is a little late in the season, it will likely not make a mark, and if it does, it will only be to remind you of that miserable, colorless unnamed season that falls right between peak autumn and snowy winter.

Once in the “beach” area, with two wooden benches facing the lake, I always wish I hadn’t been too lazy to bring hot water and coffee.

Despite my curiosity about the color situation deeper in the forest, I usually spend quite a bit of time here, as this is where they seem to keep the good light in, at all hours of the day, possibly in all seasons.

A giant cedar (I think) dominates the scene, hiding a small shrine above the tiny hill behind it. This is also where you will find that one scene that fits the description of “autumn in Japan”: a wooden, historical-looking bridge crossing the lake, connecting the shrine area to the narrow trail along the lake.

Many foliage scenes compete with each other in this area, but without feeling too overwhelming. The gorgeous light somehow keeps everything in order, creating scenery that feels cohesive rather than busy.

Before getting into the forest, there is another “landmark” along the way: Yudaki Waterfall, sadly not recognized in any national beauty rankings - not even in the top 100 - making it the underdog of falls. But you would have no way of knowing it, with all its spectacular loudness, crashing down almost at the feet of hundreds of people admiring it.

In those years when there are blue skies, peak foliage, and just a little wind pushing the leaves away from the trees to dance above the waterfall, our little underdog, Yudaki, sure gives you another iconic scene.

But not to add to Yudaki’s pain, I somehow always find myself rushing through this section, eager to reach the forest section that starts right behind the waterfall.

Just a few minutes after leaving Yudaki behind, the wooden platform curves deep into the forest, and everything gets quieter, but also much more colorful.

Right out of the gate, many different kinds of trees lean towards each other, creating rainbow-colored canopies above. This is where my heart rate picks up a little, with more butterflies-in-the-stomach sections to follow.

There are many detours along the way, each with its unique and highly tempting color options. The left route - what I call the “orange section” - leads first to a small waterfall, Kotaki, and then throws you right into the middle of Senjogahara Marshland, with its grasses yellow or crimson, or even white with the morning dew, if you are lucky.

But I usually take the right trail that continues deeper into the forest. The path gradually narrows, surrounded on both sides by dense colonies of oak trees that, at this time of year, shine with gold-colored leaves.

Every now and then, rainbow canopies reappear, popping up between the sea of gold leaves - all part of what I have come to call, in private, the Alice in Wonderland section of the trail.

And what brings me back to Oku-Nikko year after year is this forest section, not Lake Yunoko with its mirror effect, the gorgeous but loud Yudaki Waterfall, the tiny shrine, or the picturesque bridge.

Next comes the smaller marshland - Odashirogahara - allowing Oku-Nikko to put on another show. After a lake, a waterfall, the bridge (if you insist), and a colorful forest, it turns the scenery on its head and gives you a crimson-colored dry marshland, dotted with bare trees that look more like sculptures in an open-air museum.

And behind all those muted colors rise rainbow-colored mountains, making the whole scene feel both understated and energetically colorful at the same time.

Once I drag myself out of this section, which I certainly don't rush through, I ignore the alternative route options and bravely push the gate with the “beware of bears” sign on, but only after seeing a few others doing the same, and find myself back in the deep forest.

The trail continues for maybe another hour, with our trees of gold still leaning on both sides. It gets narrower and curvier as it gently climbs and descends, eventually bringing me to another decision point.

In some years, I head back north to check out the color situation along my “secondary choice” trails, including the “orange section”. In other years, I continue south and follow the trail along the Yukawa River that, in its final section, runs alongside Ryuzu Falls from top to base.

The first sight of Ryuzu also signals the end of the forest section. The trail suddenly throws you out onto a car road - with a fairly spectacular viewpoint as a consolation prize: Ryuzu descending towards Lake Chuzenji through the woods.

Ryuzu, sitting right across from the small viewing balcony attached to a cafe welcoming hundreds of people at this time of year, is certainly gorgeous, but it is somehow my least beloved waterfall in the area for the unforgivable sin of being too predictably beautiful.

In some years, this is also the end of the hike for me. But if the weather is good, I extend it for another hour with a less colorful but certainly refreshing walk by the lake, leading back to Chuzenji.

Back in my Oku-Nikko home base, I stop for a normal or suspiciously long lunch, depending on the hour of my train back to Tokyo. I usually (read: every year) eat at Maple Restaurant by the lake before heading to the “real” Nikko town, which always feels so lively and much more “visited” than where I just came from, even though its foliage peak is still a few weeks away.

Every year, I decide this will be the year I also spend a few hours in Nikko and finally visit Toshogu Shrine, one of the most famous in Japan, with a bus stop right in front of it. And every year, I watch the stop for the shrine pass by and find myself back on the train to Tokyo instead, convincing myself that an autumn foliage outing and a major shrine visit require entirely different states of mind. So, maybe next year.1

As always, thank you for being here.

Until next month,

Burcu

More autumn trips from the newsletter:

One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo

Autumn Colors Trip to Aomori, Tohoku

Four Nights, Four Onsen Stays in Tohoku During Peak Foliage

One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto

The Mighty Autumn Season: Review of My Favorite Foliage Spots in the Country

After 37 consecutive rainy days in Tokyo, we are in that delightful phase of autumn: cloudless skies, no wind, cool mornings, with very few bouts of sudden heat, as if to remind us of previous Octobers and make us grateful for the one we have.

If one could set aside the increasingly troubling real reasons behind this unusual weather pattern, I enjoyed this strange summer in Tokyo, where the rain disregarded its usual mid-July exit date and stayed with us, with a few short breaks, until early October.

After many gruelingly humid summers, it was nice not to have the entire summer structured around surviving the humidity and the daily commute to work, and to avoid developing that little grudge against this city that I otherwise adore and that deserves none of it.

I now hope the sunshine stays with us for a while to accompany the fall colors season, already at its peak in higher-altitude regions - the topic of last month’s letter that zigzagged the country to introduce some of my favorite foliage spots in chronological peak-foliage order.

This month’s letter, though, betrays the premise of this newsletter and takes a rare break from Japan for a land known for its glorious coastlines, sunny beaches, intimidating sharks (and crocodiles), and frequent sightings of gorgeous humpback whales during their migration season: Australia.

More specifically, Western Australia, where I spent a week in late September during the region's wildflower season to walk some sections1 of the Cape to Cape Trail, the 130-kilometer route that runs along the coast, connecting Cape Naturaliste in the north with Cape Leeuwin in the south.

After hiking the Great Ocean Walk in Victoria a few years earlier, another well-known Australian coastal hike that I always remember lovingly as the best hike of my life, I was looking for a similar experience in the country: a non-technical trail, with extensive coastal views, and a charming small town or two to base myself in during and after the hike.

And on the Cape to Cape Trail, I certainly found much more than I was looking for, in both wonderful and unexpectedly challenging ways.

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Scenery-wise, the trail turned out to be much more beautiful than I expected. It made me grateful for that element of surprise, which somehow survived the pre-trip overexposure that came from browsing hundreds of photos and videos while planning the trip.

With the wildflower season in full swing, the rocky coastal scenery was softened with the warmth brought on by a band of wildflowers led by yellow hibbertia, pink pimelea, and brilliant purple pigface (I of course looked all these up through Google image search - my flower vocabulary is otherwise limited to two words: rose and dandelion).

At times, the experience felt like walking through a botanic park, albeit an intentionally wildly curated one, with dense displays of flowers on both sides of the narrow trail. But the most exciting moments came when those flowers, in the most saturated colors possible, popped up unexpectedly along the sand dunes or between giant rocks, adding a welcome contrast to sections of the trail that strangely felt desert-like, despite the ocean’s constant presence.

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It is an ordinary late August day in Tokyo, with the exception of the unusually tolerable summer weather that I would rather not discuss any further, so as not to jinx it.

But I hope this relatively good weather will carry us all the way through autumn, the timing and meaning of which is a rather complex topic in Japan.

First, with the main school year and financial calendars following an April-to-March cycle, September doesn’t have the same fresh-start feel that it does in many other Northern Hemisphere countries.

The country’s tall and skinny geography also leaves little room for a collective sense of fall. Signs of the season show in the northern parts of Hokkaido as early as August, while its most beloved signifier, the colorful autumn leaves, does not reach cities like Tokyo and Kyoto until well into late November, and I am not sure if the season even makes an appearance further south in Okinawa.

But this also means we get to have a delightfully long autumn colors season, with many destination options to experience the foliage between September and mid-December. And unlike the far more capricious sakura, which grace its hosts with only a week-long presence, the gradual transformation of the leaves that takes around three weeks means that even if your trip does not coincide with the absolute peak, you are still likely to catch some version of the spectacle.1

This, unsurprisingly, brings us to this month`s topic: some of my favorite foliage-viewing destinations in Japan, in chronological order from September to December.

The tone of the letter will be similar to Hiking Japan and Reading Japan letters, covering multiple places around a single theme in a name-dropping style, with quick mentions of places and links to more detailed posts where available. That said, the geographical jumps will be a little more exhausting, with constant switches between north and south and high- and low-altitude destinations. As you will notice, the list below covers mainly the northern half of the country, as Kyushu and Shikoku, two regions I love, somehow tend to be spring trips for me.

So, here we go, starting where we actually left off last month.

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One of the earliest places to see autumn colors in Japan is Daisetsuzan National Park in Hokkaido, which was also the topic of last month's letter.

Starting in mid-September, the entire area surrounding Hokkaido`s tallest peak, Asahidake, turns into an outdoor exhibit of every possible tone of foliage, offering one last spectacle, shortly after the wildflower season, before those beautiful ponds, pine alleys, and flower fields disappear beneath the snow, not to be seen again until May or June.

The easiest way to enjoy the autumn scenery is to take the ropeway connecting the Asahidake Onsen Village to the Asahidake trailhead, which offers a ten-minute ride with a bird's-eye view of the color fest below. Once on the ground, the 4-5 hour trek to the Susoaidaira Valley is worth the effort as the vividness of the foliage along the valley perfectly matches the diversity of the alpine plants it hosts, or that is what I hear.

Despite visiting the area numerous times, most recently last month, I personally never had the good fortune of seeing the autumn colors in Asahidake. The very low odds of good weather, a weekend, and peak colors all happening at the same time, along with a reasonable airfare, push the trip, possibly perpetually, onto my list of things to look forward to.

Another famous high altitude spot that greets the peak fall colors early in the season - shortly after Asahidake in late September - but without requiring the trip that far north, is in Kamikochi in Nagano.

The Kamikochi Valley itself, known for the iconic view of Kappa Bridge with the Japanese Alps in the background, doesn’t see much color activity until at least mid-October. But Karasawa Cirque, just a steep hike above, reaches its peak foliage in late September. This bowl-shaped glacial valley, surrounded by rocky peaks and home to hair-raising trails, is perhaps the single most popular autumn color hike in the country.

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The collection below covers both the practicalities of Japan travel and ideas for where to go and what to experience, including the best times to visit, destinations within and beyond the usual Tokyo–Kyoto route, the Shinkansen and other transportation, accommodation, suggested itineraries, hiking, pilgrimage and walking routes, hot springs (onsen), and answers to some of the questions I’m most frequently asked about traveling in Japan.

Many of the resources on Letters from Asia are freely available, while Letters from Japan subscribers can also explore the growing archive of travel diaries, itineraries, and monthly letters.

Japan Trip Planning Resources

Japan Travel: Frequently Asked Questions
Ten questions I am asked most often about traveling to Japan.

When Is the Best Season to Visit Japan?
A seasonal overview from a traveler’s perspective. (Spoiler: it is not summer.)

Where Should I Visit in Japan — Beyond Tokyo and Kyoto?
Places you can easily add to an itinerary centered on Tokyo or Kyoto.

A Literary Journey Across Japan: From Okinawa to Hokkaido
Some of my favorite Japan-related reads, reviewed in geographical order.

What Is the Shinkansen?
An overview of Japan’s high-speed bullet train system and how to use it.

Summer Destinations in Japan
Summer may not be the best time to visit Japan, of course, unless you are planning to head up to the mountains or islands.

My Favorite Onsen (Hot Springs) in Japan
Day-trip and overnight hot springs across the country.

Favorite Autumn Color Destinations
Some of my favorite places for autumn foliage across Japan.

My Favorite Hostels in Japan
Hostels I have stayed in and would recommend.

My Favorite Cities in Japan
Favorite cities across the country, offering both urban wonders and easy access to nature.

Traveling in Japan on a Budget
Tips for keeping travel costs manageable.

My Favorite Hiking Trails in Japan
A south-to-north overview of the trails I return to most often.

Are Japan’s Small Islands Worth Leaving the Mainland For?
Small islands that can be as rewarding as the mainland, if not more.

Winter Trips to Japan
Some of my favorite winter destinations across the country.

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Itinerary and destination-specific content.

In addition to the above posts, below is a quick recap of some extra itinerary- and planning-focused posts (for a specific destination) available in the newsletter for paid subscribers.

One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto
A walking diary of a day in Kyoto to see the best autumn color spots.

Shibu Onsen and the Snow Monkeys of Nagano
A weekend trip to Nagano to see the snow monkeys and an overnight stay in Shibu Onsen.

Walking Nagasaki
Three historically themed walking routes to explore one of Japan`s finest cities.

One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo
A walking diary to view the best fall foliage spots in Tokyo in a day.

Tohoku Onsen Hopping: Four Nights, Four Hot Springs
A fall trip to Tohoku, staying in four different onsen each night.

Hiking the Kyoto Trail (five posts)
Diary of five days on the Kyoto Trail.

Tokyo Eateries: the Non-Gourmet Version
Some of my favorite eateries in Tokyo.

Autumn Colors Trip to Aomori: Itinerary Suggestion
Autumn colors trip itinerary to Aomori Prefecture in Tohoku.

One Fine Day in Kanazawa
A one-day walking itinerary for ever lovely Kanazawa.

Cycling the Shimanami Kaido in Two Days
Logistics-related tips for biking the Shimanami Kaido Cycling Route.

Japan Trip Planning Q&A Series (three posts)
Three Q&A format posts detailing logistical aspects of Japan travel, covering transportation, accommodation, and other details.

Winter Trip to Biei in Hokkaido (four posts)
A walking trip to Biei in Hokkaido in late December, to photograph winter landscapes.

Walking Goto Islands (eight posts)
Walking the Goto Islands off the coast of Nagasaki, visiting Hidden Christian sites.

Planning a trip to Japan?
My Letters from Japan paid archive includes travel diaries, walking itineraries, Japan trip-planning Q&As, and the complete archive of monthly letters. Paid subscriptions are USD 5/month or USD 50/year, with the annual subscription also including a one-to-one trip-planning session. Explore the complete Letters from Japan paid archive.

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It is peak season in Tokyo for lotus flowers, which you can find in abundance in Shinobazu Pond in Ueno if you visit before 9 a.m., and heat-induced trauma, which, more selfless than the lotus, will find you as soon as you step out the door.

Summers in Tokyo are challenging for sure, but if I had to say a nice thing or two, I would this year, other than the lotus - the surreal beauty of which might be the most convincing argument for some divine power up there - choose Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Extinction exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art.

Featuring more than sixty photographs by one of Japan’s most renowned photographers, it is the most inspiring exhibition I have seen this year.

One of the recurring questions Sugimoto explores through his work is whether it is still possible to see the physical world around us as our primitive ancestors did - a question that is at the heart of his best-known photographic series, Seascapes - also part of the current Extinction exhibition.

The series brings together photos of bodies of water across the world shot over the last four decades using the same composition of the motionless sea, sky, and horizon, isolated from all objects and other contextual references. It is a deceptively plain composition, even bordering on cliché, but that is exactly the point.

In his search for a visual experience shared across time, Sugimoto focuses on what he describes as “the most unchanged scene on the surface of the earth”. He reminds us that when we look at the sea, with everything else stripped away, we are looking at the same thing the earliest humans once did, and notes the sense of deeper belonging that visual connection brings:

“Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.”

Since I first came across Sugimoto’s work more than a decade ago, I have been captivated, but more importantly comforted, by the idea of “ancestral home”, the calming sense of security it brings, and its exploration through isolated landscapes.

It is a simple yet deeply poetic way to think about the grip of remoter and wilder landscapes. Without the cultural and temporal context that the signs of civilization inevitably add to the experience, the instinctive connection between ourselves and the physical world becomes a little more evident; so does the broader sense of “home” that comes with it.

And this month’s letter is about that one place in Japan, with its vastness and wilderness, that I believe magnificently delivers on all of the sentiments I pretentiously described above: Daisetsuzan in Hokkaido.

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I have been feeling a little possessed by Japan’s largest national park, fittingly known as the Playground of Gods, since I first visited about five years ago, and have returned whenever I could, most recently just last week.

In this country, where nature and culture are so deeply intertwined, landscapes are rarely experienced in isolation from their cultural and historical context. There is almost always something to remind us where we are, whether it be a shrine, a torii gate that marks the entry to the sacred territory, or a small jizo statue that is there to protect us as it did the pilgrims of ancient times. And that, in many ways, is what sets the hiking experience in Japan apart. It is its greatest appeal.

But then there is also, at least for me lately, the increasingly strong pull of a wilder, less mediated, less defined experience - without the vocabulary or the frames to tame it. And in Japan, Daisetsuzan, which feels significantly wilder and untameable, is the one place where nature, in all its majesty, pushes all those interpretive tools away and becomes the defining experience.

The rest of this post is available to paid Letters from Japan subscribers. Each monthly letter is free to read when published and becomes part of the paid archive when a new monthly letter is published. Paid subscribers receive continuing access to the complete archive of more than 70 posts, including all past monthly letters, additional travel diaries, walking itineraries and other Japan travel resources. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

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I hope you are having a lovely June, and that your country`s team is doing much better than mine in the ongoing Football World Cup, which is honestly not a difficult feat, as we managed to become one of the first two countries to be eliminated.

Apart from my country`s miserable World Cup performance, which I had the great misfortune of witnessing in a pub in Kyoto at midday, where dozens of other Turks seemed to materialize out of nowhere, along with a group of Australians who understandably put more energy into teasing us than into watching the game, this must be the most pleasant June/rainy season that I have had in Japan in the last five years.

There is the occasional rain, as if to justify the season’s name, and a persistent breeze that momentarily fools you into thinking Tokyo is one of the most liveable cities on Earth, before the news reminds you of the upcoming “double typhoon”, which will serve as a brutal transition to July, when even a triple typhoon will sound like a blessing compared to the traumatizing combination of heat and humidity that awaits us for months to come.

Encouraged by this brief, misleading phase of lovely weather, my original intention for this month`s letter was a photo-heavy Tokyo edition featuring select walking routes, similar to the recent Walking Nagasaki one. But in all honesty, I could not take enough photos (or good enough ones) to justify such a post, which will require a bit more time and dedicated effort.

So, instead, inspired by all the helpful summer reading lists circulating online, I thought this month’s letter might be a fitting moment to bring back one of the most-read letters from almost a year ago, especially as many new readers have joined Letters from Japan since it was first published: a literary journey across Japan through books, arranged geographically from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

But, before we get into it, here’s a quick mid-year look back at what was covered in the newsletter over the past six months.

The year began with a love letter to the harsh but beautiful winters of Hokkaido, soon followed by a Hiking Japan edition listing some of my favorite trails across the country, starting in Okinawa and ending in Hokkaido. March was devoted to Japan’s onsen culture, exploring the concept while introducing some of my favorite hot springs. The April letter took a more destination-focused approach, inspired by a recent hike along the Nakahechi Route of the Kumano Kodo, while May was dedicated to one of Japan’s most fascinating cities, Nagasaki, and the islands off its coast.

For paid subscribers, there were also several itinerary-focused guides, including one centered on Snow Monkeys and Shibu Onsen, and another featuring three historically themed walks through Nagasaki. Elsewhere in the paid archive, you’ll also find an autumn walking tour of Tokyo, a collection of favorite Tokyo eateries (to read at your own risk, as I am about as far from a gourmet as one can be), a detailed diary from a four-day journey through Tohoku, staying in four different rustic onsen, and a number of other itinerary-focused posts.

On the website, there have also been several planning-focused additions, including Japan Travel: Frequently Asked Questions, an index that brings together all Japan trip planning posts, and the frequently updated "Where to Visit in Japan Other Than Tokyo and Kyoto."1

As always, thank you for being here and for your interest in the newsletter. After this brief mid-year pause, I’ll be back with fresh content in July.

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Reading Japan: From Hokkaido to Okinawa

Link to the original letter:

September 2025

Good evening from Wakkanai, Japan’s northernmost city, whose undeniable lack of aesthetic appeal feels almost intentional, serving to amplify the beauty of the country’s arguably most picturesque island, Rebun, which lies right across the water, only a two-hour boat ride away.

When choosing the destination for this most recent hiking trip, I set two conditions. First was to find somewhere that was cooler than Tokyo. A requirement that unhelpfully narrowed down my choices to virtually every other place on earth that is not Tokyo, which this year took the humidity to such a degree that the city feels less like a place to live and more like a laboratory built to test the limits of the human body.

The second condition, as vital as the first, was to find a place with no recent bear sightings or attacks. Due to a record number of sightings and, unfortunately, attacks observed all through Japan this summer, this second condition ruled out many of the obvious choices on the four main islands, except for Kyushu, where the bear population went extinct decades ago, and smaller islands off the mainland, where the bears, despite being excellent swimmers, rarely bother to cross.

Although I was initially tempted to revisit Yakushima (Kyushu’s beloved hiking heaven), in the end, the pair of Rebun and Rishiri Islands, off the northern coast of Hokkaido, felt more attractive as the safest bet for the cool weather. They also kind of met the second condition: Rebun is entirely bear-free, while Rishiri, according to the experts, is “99% bear-free”, a statement needed after a shocking event in 2018 when a brown bear, possibly no longer wanting to put up with the depressive mood of Wakkanai, swam over from the mainland Hokkaido.

This month's letter, however, is not about the heavenly beauty of Rebun Island, which I first visited and wrote about last summer, or the impossibly good-looking peak of Mount Rishiri, especially when reflected in the water. Instead, it offers a high-tempo literary journey across Japan, starting in Hokkaido and ending in Okinawa, with the aim of introducing books that you may enjoy during your travels to all those places.

But before the books and this month`s theme inspired by Alan Booth’s travelogue The Roads to Sata: A 2,000-Mile Walk Through Japan, which I re-read while in Rebun, one quick note about these two remote islands that I just got back from: if you visit Japan during the summer, have no desire to risk death at the increasingly vengeful hands of humidity, enjoy gentle hikes with outstanding landscape scenery made even more perfect by alpine flowers that bloom between June and August, Rebun will absolutely make you happy. Rishiri has, honestly, less to offer in terms of scenery, though perfectly shaped Mount Rishiri, which you can climb up, still makes it a worthy stopover (even the lone bear could apparently not resist).

Now, on to this month’s topic and a list of more than twenty books.

Published in 1985 based on a walk that took place in 1977, The Roads to Sata recounts Alan Booth’s journey on foot from Cape Soya, the northernmost tip of Japan near Wakkanai in Hokkaido, all the way to Cape Sata, the southernmost point of Kyushu. Booth`s dry but somewhat comforting and relatable tone, thanks to his resistance to over-romanticizing the sights, his experiences, and his challenging endeavor, coupled with the easily detected affection for the country, makes it a compelling read.

In addition to his tone and the fact that the humor in the book is mainly at his expense rather than the country`s, what makes Booth’s account of his walk across Japan stand out for me is how well it captures one of the country’s most dreary yet surprisingly rewarding aspects. Step just a little outside the safe and already proven tourism zones, which are naturally or artificially built to deliver the awe factor that we all hope to get out of our travels, and watch all the idyllic expectations you might have attached to rural Japan quickly fade away, forcing you into a new set of architectural, social, and infrastructural realities. This new reality, often at odds not only with the country`s perceived status as a high-tech nation but also romantic notions attached to rural life in developed countries (the rolling green hills, picture perfect wooden houses, lack of concrete?), will inevitably lead to unexpected experiences, offering sometimes the most frustrating, and sometimes the most thrilling cases of “be careful what you wish for” when it comes to our never-ending search for “authenticity”.

I was already 40 when I moved to Japan and had traveled extensively until then, but I think my experiences in rural Japan taught me at least as much about what I personally seek in travel as all my previous trips combined. I like to think those experiences, which first destroy the expectations you bring with you and then give you room and tools to build new ones, have made me a slightly more mature traveler.

Although Alan Booth walked the country in 1977 and much has changed since then, I think the sentiment he conveys about travels in deep rural Japan still lingers today, urging you to look more closely without any clear sense of what the reward might be, ultimately pushing you to create your own.

As you might have noticed, re-reading the Hokkaido sections of Roads to Sata during this latest trip, before bed, and remembering Booth`s inconsequential but subtly moving account was a joy (elevated further by the cool weather that required me to close the windows in the evenings). To honor that joy and in the same spirit, I’ve compiled a list of some other books, arranged by city/region from Hokkaido to Okinawa, that may hopefully bring a similar sense of delight to your own travels in Japan.

I’ll quickly jump from location to location, north to south, dropping book names with a short summary of each, both to keep this letter to a reasonable length and to disguise my shortcomings in the book-review department.2

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Alan Booth's walk starts at Cape Soya, the country's northernmost point, which I had been a little too lazy to visit despite heading that far up north several times. In the first two chapters, which cover the Hokkaido leg of his journey with stops in small towns like Tomamae as well as larger cities such as Sapporo, Booth never lets us forget the island’s remoteness and wilderness. He refers to Hokkaido as the “outpost” in one chapter, and as the “savage island” in another, and, along with the account of the early days of his walk (full of blisters and limping), delves into the island's history, with a focus on its original settlers, the Ainu, and its centuries of isolation.

In one of the best-known works of fiction set in Hokkaido, Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, the writer similarly taps into the island's remoteness as an atmospheric backdrop for his story, centered on a search for a mysterious sheep. He takes his two protagonists first from Tokyo to Sapporo and then, slowly, deeper into the northern territory, and dials up the level of mystery with each step towards the north.

I am not a Murakami fan, but I am definitely a fan of Hokkaido, which I first became aware of when I read A Wild Sheep Chase many years ago - a book that admittedly does a great job of portraying Hokkaido as an enigmatic place, maybe even more than it actually is.

Leaving Hokkaido behind by hopping on a ferry from Hakodate to cross the Tsugaru Strait to Aomori, we arrive at Tohoku, a region that frequently features in this newsletter. Despite being part of Honshu, Japan`s largest and most populated island, parts of Tohoku often feel even more remote than Hokkaido.

While increasingly gaining the recognition and interest it deserves for its cultural wonders and dramatic landscape, the region, particularly its eastern coast, is unfortunately still mainly known for one of the country’s most devastating natural disasters: the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, which struck Tohoku and resulted in more than 20,000 deaths.

David Pilling's book of essays, Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival, published three years after the earthquake, reads in part as an ode to the resilience of the people of Tohoku and their strong sense of community. Pilling, who served as the Tokyo bureau chief of the Financial Times for nearly a decade, offers insights into the systematic and even historic factors that may have contributed to the tragedy and how the country dealt with its aftermath.

Although I highly recommend Pilling’s book for a whole new perspective on Japan, Alex Kerr's most recent book, Hidden Japan, published in 2023, may be a better option for a more uplifting read about Tohoku. A long-term resident of Japan and a renowned expert on Japanese culture,3 Kerr devotes two of the book’s ten chapters to Tohoku: in one, he travels to Akita Prefecture to explore the origins of Butoh, a Japanese dance theather, and in another, he visits Minami Aizu and the nearby Ouchi-juku in Fukushima Prefecture, a region famous for its thatch-roofed houses - though not as much as Gifu’s Shirakawa-go - hence the title Hidden Japan.

Right next to Fukushima Prefecture in Tohoku sits Niigata Prefecture, part of the Chūbu region and Japan’s primary rice-growing area, which is famous for its sake. The prefecture, more specifically its onsen town of Echigo-Yuzawa, is also the inspiration for one of the most well-known books by Japan’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature, Yasunari Kawabata. Snow Country tells the tragic love story of a married Tokyo man and a local geisha against the backdrop of a snowy hot-spring town—a setting that is not difficult to find in mountainous Japan, and feels as magical in real life as it does in novels and movies.

Our next stop is the Kiso Valley, which stretches along the Kiso River between Gifu and Nagano Prefectures, south of Niigata. The valley is home to a series of towns that are part of the ancient Nakasendo Way, which connected Tokyo to Kyoto during the Edo period via sixty-nine postal towns. Even though I found Walking the Kiso Road: A Modern-Day Exploration of Old Japan, a travelogue by William Scott Wilson, a little clunky and incoherent in how it blends historical facts with the author’s journey from town to town, I would probably still pack it if I revisited the area, but more as a guide than a compelling read.

Just a few hours east of the Kiso Valley lies a tiny little city, home to 15 million people, including me, also known as the capital of Japan. The sheer number of books written about Tokyo or set in the city is enough to warrant a newsletter devoted to the topic. However, since I am not up to the task, I will mention a few titles starting with The Little House by Kyoko Nakajima, which, from the perspective of the housemaid, tells the story of a small Tokyo family, ordinary on the surface but full of hidden intrigues. The story spans both the pre-war Tokyo and the tragedy of the post-war era, when the bombings of March 1945 resulted in nearly 100,000 casualties in the city.

For a more contemporary story taking place in Japan's largest city, Hiromi Kawakami's Strange Weather in Tokyo, which follows the love affair between a woman in her 30s and her elderly former high school teacher, is an engaging, quick read, and makes great use of the city's atmospheric izakayas and parks.

Before wrapping up this undeservedly short Tokyo section, I should also mention Norwegian Wood, one of my favorite books by one of my not-so-favorite authors—yes, Haruki Murakami. The book that turned Murakami into a literary phenomenon in Japan and made him flee the country for a while due to excessive public interest (I may be rolling my eyes a little) centers on a friendship-and-love triangle among three students set against the backdrop of university life in 1960s Tokyo.

The abundance of books about Tokyo, of course, similarly applies to the country's old capital, otherwise known as its most visited, most revered, and, unfortunately, most complained-about city - Kyoto.

If you would like to get a sense of the city in the 1950s, The Old Capital by Yasunari Kawabata, first published in 1962, is an intimate family story that focuses on twin sisters separated at birth. Kyoto is a major character in the book, with some of its well-known events serving as a backdrop to major plot points, such as the Gion Festival held in the city every July.

Another one of Kyoto’s most well-known spots, and its shiniest temple, Kinkaku-ji (the Golden Pavilion), has an entire book devoted to it by Yukio Mishima, one of Japan’s most talented and controversial writers, who committed seppuku after he led a failed coup d'état attempt in 1970.

In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, loosely inspired by real events (no spoiler: someone sets the temple on fire), Mishima explores the concept of beauty and the destructive obsession that accompanies it through the eyes of a young Buddhist acolyte serving at Kinkaku-ji.

Driven by a much healthier kind of obsession with the city’s architectural wonders, Alex Kerr's book Another Kyoto serves as a highly informed yet accessible guide to the secrets behind the city’s temples, gardens, and other attractions. Organized under various themes, including gates, walls, and tatami floors, the book, in a conversational tone, highlights the details one might otherwise have no way of noticing alone.

Our next stop, Kyoto's big city neighbour, often either despised or praised for being one of the least polished cities in Japan, Osaka, serves as the home base of the Makioka Family, the family at the center of The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. The family saga is told through the different realities and perspectives of the family's four sisters, who each represent a different aspect of Japanese society and the evolving role of women during one of the most consequential periods in the nation's history, just before World War II and its early phases. Cited as the most important Japanese novel since World War II by The New York Times, the book has also been adapted into a movie. If you have time for only one book before your trip to Japan, Makioka Sisters would be my choice.

Before crossing onto Shikoku Island, a few quick but worthy stops. First, at the Seto Inland Sea, surrounded by seven prefectures and home to hundreds of islands, to mention The Inland Sea by Donald Richie. While I have yet to read Richie`s book, published in 1971, I felt compelled to add it to the list as it is often praised as one of the most moving travelogues about Japan, exploring the small island life in the mid-20th century.

A more recent addition to real-life accounts focused on the Setouchi Islands is The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter by Amy Chavez, which focuses on the stories of residents of Shiraishi Island, where she resides. Chavez is also responsible for the wonderful Books on Asia website, which is an unbelievably generous source of information about literature related to Asia, and primarily Japan.

The spiritually charged Kii Peninsula, just east of the Setouchi region, is best known for its network of pilgrimage trails collectively referred to as the Kumano Kodo, as well as for being home to Japan’s most sacred site, the Ise-Jingu Grand Shrine. Long-term Japan resident Craig Mod’s recently published book Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir reads partly as a memoir about his youth in the United States and partly as a travelogue covering his extensive walks along the peninsula’s pilgrimage trails. In addition to this recent book, Walk Kumano, Mod’s website dedicated to the pilgrimage routes of Kumano Kodo, inspires one not only to walk the same routes but also to strive for that level of perfection in web content.

One cannot pass through our next stop, Shikoku, without mentioning Lost Japan by Alex Kerr, originally published in 1993. It is a book that I return to very often, mainly for Alex Kerr's admirably modest but poignant writing style. Kerr never sounds preachy, but does not pull any punches when it comes to criticizing governmental policies deemed to have an adverse impact on the country`s cultural wonders. While the book, in a series of essays, touches upon a wide range of topics about Japan, Iya Valley in Shikoku, where Alex Kerr bought a house in the 1970s, is a major character in most of his stories. The book beautifully conveys the feeling of what life was like in this remote corner of Japan in the past, while also delving into the captivating history of the region, which once hosted exiled Heike soldiers who built numerous vine bridges across the valley.

For those planning to walk the famous Shikoku Pilgrimage Route, which covers 88 Buddhist temples throughout the four prefectures of the island, Walking in Circles: Finding Happiness in Lost Japan by Todd Wassel is, despite its tacky name, an engaging read. The author, as he depicts his journey of self-discovery along the route, manages to avoid tired clichés (all reserved for the book's title) and offers an often humorous and honest account of his journey.

For an account of the same walk from a woman`s perspective in 1918 under wildly different circumstances, The 1918 Shikoku Pilgrimage of Takamure Itsue is an excellent choice.

As we approach the end of the list, our next stop is Kyushu Island and one of Japan`s historically most significant cities, Nagasaki.

As I mentioned in a previous letter, I find Nagasaki to be one of the most important cities to visit in Japan for a better understanding of how interactions with other cultures have shaped the Japan of today. Remembered today for the horrific event of 1945, Nagasaki was ironically one of Japan`s first points of contact with foreign cultures starting in the late 16th Century. This short-lived period of openness came to an almost absolute halt in the early 17th century, when the sakoku (closed country) policy, aimed at ensuring self-isolation and blocking foreign influence, was enforced by the Tokugawa Shogunate and strictly observed between 1639 and 1853.

David Mitchell's historical fiction, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, is set on Dejima, which is one of the strangest features of this isolation policy. The artificial island built off Nagasaki in 1636 (and now replicated in the city as a museum) served as a confined space to facilitate trade with select foreign groups, while also ensuring that they remained offshore and isolated from the local population. Mitchell tells the story (complete with forbidden love) of a young Dutch clerk in late 18th-century Nagasaki who becomes one of the few residents of Dejima, which at the time was exclusively reserved for the Dutch traders - the only Westerners allowed to trade with Japan for more than two centuries between 1641 and 1858.

The period of sakoku was also partly a reaction to the powerful religious influence of Jesuit priests who arrived in Nagasaki with the first Portuguese ships in the late 16th century, leading many Japanese to convert to Christianity and earning the city the nickname “Little Rome.” This influence, deemed unwanted by the Shogunate, eventually led to a ban on Christianity that lasted for more than two centuries, accompanied by the cruelly implemented policy of persecution. During this period, secret Christian communities, known as the Hidden Christians of Japan, formed on remote islands off the coast of Nagasaki, including the Goto Islands and Amakusa, to practice their religion in secret, away from the authorities' scrutiny.

This historical period and the region have, over the last decade, gathered increased attention, first with the release of the movie Silence by Martin Scorsese in 2016 telling the story of two Jesuit priests who traveled to Japan during the period when the ban on Christianity was in full effect (based on the book by Shusaku Endo, which is much more layered than Scorsese`s re-telling of the story) and then the addition of 12 sites in the region to the UNESCO World Heritage List under the heading Hidden Christians in Nagasaki Region in 2018. In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians by John Dougill, which reads both as a historical guide and a travelogue, is an excellent book for those planning to visit this fascinating region of Japan and the sites associated with the country`s Hidden Christians.

We have now arrived at our last stop, Japan’s southernmost islands, home to the world’s longest-living people. Despite my endless affection for Okinawa, featured in the July letter, I hadn’t read a book set there until this summer, when I picked up Islands of Protest, an anthology of short stories, poems (that I only partially read) and a play (that I must confess I have not read) by Okinawa-based writers who capture the region’s enigmatic, disconnected, and delightfully strange spirit. Among the seven short stories featured in the book, Island Confinement by Sakiyama Tami is my favorite.

So, this wraps up this month’s letter. As always, thank you for being here and allowing my monthly letters in your inbox. I will be back in a month, hopefully featuring a new destination.

Until then,

Burcu

P.S. In addition to the monthly letters, below is a quick recap of the extra itinerary and planning-focused posts available on the newsletter for monthly and annual subscribers. You can access each one here on Substack or on a single page on my website.4

One Fine Day in Nagasaki: Three Walking Routes

Shibu Onsen and the Snow Monkeys of Nagano

One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo

Hiking the Kyoto Trail (five posts)

One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto

Tohoku Onsen Hopping: Four Nights, Four Hot Spring Inns

Tokyo Eateries: the Non-Gourmet Version

Autumn Colors Trip to Aomori: Itinerary Suggestion

One Fine Day in Kanazawa

Cycling the Shimanami Kaido in Two Days

Japan Trip Planning Q&A Series (three posts)

Winter Trip to Biei in Hokkaido (four posts)

Walking Goto Islands (eight posts)

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I hope early summer, or winter, depending on where you are, is treating you well. With the consistently cloudy days and one typhoon already behind us, the rainy season is surely upon us here in Japan.

But even though I am always game to dwell on the weather (a habit I picked up only after moving to Japan) or pre-complain about the approaching summer season, that is not what brought me to your inbox today.

Instead, I am here to share a new addition to the One Fine Day city series, available to monthly and annual subscribers: an itinerary-focused guide to Nagasaki that complements the May letter, which briefly touched upon the city, the islands off its coast, and their shared history.

But, unlike the other One Fine Day posts (such as One Fine Day in Kanazawa, One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto, and One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo), which follow a single day from morning to evening, this Nagasaki guide takes a slightly different approach.

Since the city simply has too many historically significant sites to fit comfortably into a single day (unless built around a specific seasonal theme such as sakura or autumn foliage), this new addition offers three “One Fine Days” in Nagasaki, each built around a different historical theme and walking route:

Nagasaki Atomic Bomb History Walk – covering both surviving structures and memorials connected to the 1945 atomic bombing.

Nagasaki Western Heritage Walk – exploring the city’s early encounters with the West, from trade and missionary activity to the centuries of Hidden Christianity that followed.

Nagasaki Chinese Heritage Walk – focusing on the city’s relationship with China, including temples and one of Japan’s oldest Chinatowns.

At the end, there is also a link to a Google map that outlines all three walks and the stops mentioned in each section (along with a few pins about the cafés/eateries/hotels I like in the city). And as always, if you would like to discuss more about any of the sites or routes featured below, please do not hesitate to e-mail me.

I would once again like to thank you for your support of this newsletter and your interest. Possibly the trickiest part of running a newsletter is finding the right balance between emailing too frequently and not frequently enough. I hope this extra email and the new addition to the Paid Archive sit somewhere in the middle.

You can review all the posts in the paid archive here on Substack or on the dedicated page on my website: Letters from Japan - Paid Archive.

Now on to our topic.

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Nagasaki Atomic Bomb History Walk

While it is inevitably always a heartbreaking experience, I deeply value historical sites tied to human-triggered tragedies for their power to remind us and, more importantly, warn us of what once happened and what could happen again if we cease to prioritize peace.

Nagasaki, the second city subjected to the atomic bomb in Japan during World War II, just three days after the devastation of Hiroshima, is today home not only to museums and memorial halls related to the event, but also to a remarkable number of structures that survived the events of 9 August 1945 and continue to carry the message of what happened out in the open.

One of those sites lies just a thirty-minute walk from Nagasaki Station, and makes an ideal first stop for this walk.

Standing on the first terrace of a long staircase that climbs through the city’s many hills, it would be easy not to notice the One-Legged Torii, standing quietly up there in the middle of a dense residential area as if there is nothing unusual about it.

Yet this modest structure, located only 900 meters from the hypocentre of the atomic bomb, lost one of its pillars in the blast, while the Sanno Shrine, whose entrance it marked, was entirely destroyed. Today, this surviving half of the torii, with flowers placed at its foot, remains one of Nagasaki`s most striking symbols of survival.

Turning left from the torii gate, you will encounter an even more hopeful survivor: two camphor trees guarding the entrance of the Sanno Shrine (which has been rebuilt in the years following the A-bomb).

Severely damaged by the blast and initially presumed dead, the trees later sprouted new branches and continued to grow, and have since been embraced by the locals as a sign of healing and hope.

Today, the Sanno Shrine`s camphors are possibly the city`s most visited hibakujumoku - the atomic-bomb survivor trees that continue to grow throughout the city.

In total, Nagasaki records 50 such trees, which are the focus of the Kusunoki Project, which aims to preserve these surviving trees and pass on their stories to future generations. You can learn more about the project on this dedicated website: Project Kusunoki.

There are also, of course, several sites in the city intentionally built to remember the victims of the A-bomb, and promote the cause of peace. At our next stop - just a ten-minute walk from the Sanno Shrine Torii - you will find one of the most sorrowful sites related to the tragedy: Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims.

While the Memorial Hall does not carry the tangible evidence of the tragedy like the Sanno Torii Gate, with the shallow water basin - a reminder of the water deeply craved by the victims - and the 70,0001 lights hidden below to symbolize the lives lost, it is a site that remains at least as powerful.

The hall sits directly beneath the water basin and is defined by twelve pillars that face the A-bomb`s hypocentre. It is also here that the names of 201,942 victims are preserved in 205 registry books, where they are remembered and enshrined.

What strikes me most is that these registry books continue to be updated, even 80 years later. As recently as August 2025, new names were added following family notifications, ongoing historical research, and the completion of previously missing records.

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The remainder of this post is available to paid subscribers. Upgrade below for unlimited access to the complete Letters from Japan archive of around 70 posts. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

Also available in the archive are these other city walking itineraries:

One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto — a full-day fall-colors walking itinerary.

One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo — a walking itinerary for the city’s peak foliage season.

One Fine Day in Kanazawa — a full day on foot covering the city's landmarks.

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It is a lovely, late-spring day in Tokyo, and a simple one.

Golden Week is gone, and in the absence of fall colors or sakura (or the divinely beautiful lotus flowers that will not appear until July), there is a less pronounced sense of seasonal urgency. There are just blue skies, occasionally with some puffy clouds, mild lushness in the gardens, and the natural light that famously glides through the city`s narrow alleys from dawn till dusk.

There is, of course, also the hint of humidity that will kidnap the entire city in the coming months, but for now, the warmth feels comforting, reminding me of places with normal summer seasons, unlike the unsurvivable version we have here in Japan.

May is one of those months that I catch myself enviously looking at the travelers I see on the train in the morning. I am on my way to work, but they have the whole day ahead of them to explore this very walkable city, which will likely leave them a little disoriented yet curiously charmed. Many sites will be covered, with many more inevitably sacrificed to the city’s endlessness.

I don’t know any other city as skillful as Tokyo at keeping you always on your toes. It lets you in just enough to keep you captivated, but also makes it a little teasingly obvious that it has so many other layers you will likely never access, locking you into a continuous, seductive, and sometimes a little exhausting game of hide-and-seek.

But this month’s letter is about a city that reveals itself a little more openly and asks a lot less physically, leaving room for the emotional weight it carries. With its deep wounds still out in the open, yet inspiringly contrasted by its vibrant daily life, it is a city I repeatedly find my way back to: Nagasaki.

I am, like many, drawn to Nagasaki for its rich history, defined by centuries of first flourishing, then complicated, and eventually devastating encounters with the outside world. But I am equally captivated by its present-day, inevitably shaped by that past, resulting in a city that feels unmistakably Japanese yet cosmopolitan, in both its architecture and culture.

Then there is also its unbelievably flattering geography - a city built around the calm waters of Nagasaki Bay, spreading across steep hills, beautifully depicted in Nagasaki-born Kazuo Ishiguro`s heartbreaking novel A Pale View of the Hills, which tells the story of two women, one mother to a daughter, the other soon to be, trying to cope with the aftermath of the atomic bombing.

The physical signs of that devastation, delicately woven into Ishiguro's story, are still visible across the city, in the form of a half-standing torii gate, a partially destroyed school building, a camphor tree believed to have died but unexpectedly sprouted new shoots, joining the ranks of hibakujumoku - A-bombed but still standing trees, or the bell of an otherwise entirely destroyed cathedral.

Between the bay and those hills also lies a vibrant city with countless narrow alleys. Their colorful and deliciously chaotic atmosphere makes it obvious that you are in the south - at least south of Japan - even if not in a Southeast Asian city, though you would be forgiven for thinking you were in one. Scooters zig-zag through those alleys all night long, largely unbothered by the pedestrians, who themselves appear to care even less after a certain point in the evening. This is Kyushu, after all.

Nagasaki is also one of the few cities in Japan that wholeheartedly embraces the surrounding sea rather than carefully hiding from it. Thanks to the bay`s sheltered waters, which make it a little less vulnerable to tsunamis, the city, with a seaside promenade lined with cafés, at times carries the feel of a Riviera town or even the Bosphorus, making me feel both nostalgic for home and at home in Nagasaki.

But Nagasaki is also undeniably a Japanese city, sometimes not so easy on the eyes, yet full of visual surprises around every corner. Like the best Japanese cities, it is imperfectly perfect, asking you to look beyond the visual chaos it throws at you and appreciate the city as a whole rather than getting distracted by the unappealing individual buildings.

For a more effortless beauty, there is always Teramachi, the street hosting several temples, including Sōfuku-ji, originally built by the city’s Chinese residents in the 17th century, or Suwa Shrine across the river, reportedly built to divert the interest back to the country’s native religion, at a time when Nagasaki was widely seen as the flourishing center of Christianity.

Nagasaki’s long and influential history and the distinct culture it shaped are, of course, not confined to the city’s borders.

The entire region, with the Goto Islands to the west, the haunting Shimabara Peninsula to the east, and the Amakusa Islands to the south, carries the traces of centuries shaped by Nagasaki’s complicated relationship with the outside world.

Beginning in the 16th century, the region stood at the forefront of Japan’s first encounters with Western culture. Nagasaki Port opened in 1571 and facilitated a few short decades of vibrant trade that brought not only foreign goods from the West but also Jesuit Priests and Christianity.

The rest of this post is available to paid Letters from Japan subscribers. Each monthly letter is free to read when published and becomes part of the paid archive when a new monthly letter is published. Paid subscribers receive continuing access to the complete archive of more than 70 posts, including all past monthly letters, additional travel diaries, walking itineraries and other Japan travel resources. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

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Tokyo is slowly coming out of another short but always delightful sakura season. The green leaves are already taking over the cherry trees, pushing their way through the blossoms, which have begun falling en masse, bringing the spectacle down to the sidewalks.

The sakura season, once again, brought many rainy days. It also felt a little less vivid, yet more chaotic this year. But I am grateful for the two full sunny days the Tokyo skies blessed us with, right at the tail end of the peak bloom, and on the weekend. What more could we ask for?

We are now in that sweet spot between seasons - air conditioners off, winter coats almost stored away, and the ever-present breeze switching between a wintry chill and that warm wash over your face.

The mountains are also warming up, with the snow getting a bit slushier each day, before the greenery and then the summer flowers take over.

The peak hiking season should already be underway in the southernmost regions, like Yakushima, with mainland Kyushu and its ever-gorgeous Kuju Mountains soon to follow. It is, however, still too early for the Japanese Alps, and of course, Hokkaido, where you can count on sakura well into May, and should not be surprised to encounter some snow on its mountains in July.

But in this land of mountains, known for their relatively modest height, there are also many trails that are not bound by the seasons and can be hiked year-round. And this month, I come bearing news from one of them: the dearly beloved Kumano Kodo, and more specifically, its Nakahechi Route, once the favored path of the imperial family for their pilgrimage from Kyoto to the sacred shrines of Kumano.1

The Nakahechi pilgrimage route, which I first hiked in 2018 with a guide and then again just a few weeks ago with two friends visiting from home, is the one destination in Japan that I receive the most emails about through the website or this newsletter (along with the Kerama Islands of Okinawa).

Kumano Kodo’s ever-growing popularity, supported by a well-developed tourism infrastructure, lies, I assume, in the experience it offers - combining a deeply cultural side with a nature-oriented one.

The region, comprising a network of ancient pilgrimage routes and the sacred sites they connect, has been recognized as a natural and cultural UNESCO World Heritage site since 2004, and is celebrated as a landscape shaped by the cooperation between nature and humans.

A visit to Kumano Kodo typically involves three to four days of hiking on its forest trails through the mountain passes, staying at small, family-run lodges along the way, and visiting the sacred sites comprised of shrines, temples, and the world’s largest torii gate. It is certainly one of the most fulfilling ways to experience Japan and observe how the country's spiritual backbone is deeply rooted in nature.

But while the Kumano Kodo is very much a spiritual experience, the planning part of it rarely feels like one. If anything, it can be a little spirit-breaking, with accommodation logistics, transport connections, and limited availability bringing you close to giving up - speaking from experience.

For that reason, this month’s letter will be a little different in tone and structure. Instead of the usual format, more like a real letter, heavier on impressions and lighter on logistics, it will, in structure, be a little closer to the travel diaries series available to monthly and annual subscribers, with more emphasis on planning and itinerary details, alongside the notes from the recent hike.

We will begin with what the Kumano Kodo is, then move on to the different route options (there are many), followed by notes and itinerary details from our recent hike, and finish with the FAQ section, which also addresses the increasingly tricky process of booking accommodation.

What is Kumano Kodo?

Kumano Kodo – 熊野古道 – means the ancient roads of Kumano, referring to a network of pilgrimage routes across the southern part of the Kii Peninsula, mainly within Wakayama Prefecture, and extending into parts of Mie and Nara.

These routes connect the region’s sacred sites, most notably the Kumano Sanzan trio - Kumano Hongu Taisha, Kumano Nachi Taisha, and Kumano Hayatama Taisha - which are among the most important Shinto shrines in Japan, but also reflect strong Buddhist influence.

The pilgrimage routes that connect these shrines also lead to other major spiritual centers of the region, including Mount Koya, a more than 1,200-year-old monastic complex that has long served as the center of Shingon Buddhism in Japan, and the Yoshino-Omine mountains, associated with Shugendō, a tradition that blends Buddhism, Shinto, and mountain ascetic practices.

The Kumano region, with its sacred sites linked to different religious or spiritual traditions, and the surrounding nature, in which Japan's indigenous religion is rooted, is recognized as among the most distinctive displays of religious fusion - an aspect also strongly emphasized by UNESCO in its description of the region.

Kumano Kodo is, certainly, one of the places that clearly highlight what makes the hiking experience in Japan special.

While the country`s trails, purely from a scenic beauty perspective, may not feel as life-altering as those in places like New Zealand, Norway, or Switzerland, the cultural and spiritual elements that underpin the whole experience put it in its own league.

This unique dimension is more noticeable in trails like Kumano Kodo and Shikoku, which have long served as pilgrimage routes shaped by religious practices, or in Mount Fuji, one of Japan's three sacred mountains, parts of which are owned by a shrine. But it is also present, albeit in a less apparent way, on the country`s more ordinary trails, even those that do not benefit from centuries-long historical context.

Once you start to notice it, you see it everywhere: small shrines tucked into the forest, a Jizō statue - the protector of travelers and children - by the side of the path, or an unassuming torii gate that comes out of nowhere, just to lead the way to the sacred grounds that you did not know were there.

Then there is another cultural dimension - the very human, worldly one: a sense of camaraderie that you will notice on the country’s trails, one that reflects its understated yet sincerely felt hospitality just as much as a stay in an expensive ryokan, if not more.

I remember my first time hiking in Daisetsuzan, the vast and beautiful bear country, and overhearing the elderly Japanese couple decide to extend their hike until we came across other hikers, so that I would not have to continue alone. Or a hiker I had met only moments earlier, offering me half of their food, in case I had not packed any.

Even those quiet konnichiwas you often hear on the trails serve a moving purpose: to give each other the sense that you are not alone on the trail and that, should you need help, it is never far away.

So whenever I feel a bit disconnected from this country, a little disoriented about my purpose here, hiking trails are always a great way to remind me of its kindness and why I am here.

And I am, in many ways, grateful to the Kumano Kodo, my first introduction to hiking in Japan, for that initial sense of connection, possibly for igniting my move here, and for leading the way for many other experiences.

Routes of Kumano Kodo

That first visit to Kumano Kodo was in February 2018, more than a year before I moved to Japan. At that time, in the company of two wonderful guides (in different sections), I hiked parts of the most popular Nakahechi Route, following the more conventional route from Takijiri to Hongu/Yunomine Onsen, then spent two nights in Koyasan.

In February 2020, right before COVID shut down the world and very shortly after I moved to Japan, I returned to Kumano Kodo to explore sections of one of its less-visited trails - the Iseji Route, also known as the Eastern Route, which connects the Ise Shrine to Kumano Hongu Taisha.

And just last month, I was back in Kumano Kodo for the third time, this time to hike the Nakahechi Route in reverse order, starting at Nachi Falls and originally intending to finish at Takijiri (but ending it at Takahara).

While my experience with the Kumano Kodo is limited to the Nakahechi and Iseji Routes, the network includes two other main routes and a few lesser-known alternatives.2

For a bit more context, here is a brief overview of the four main routes, together with a map marking all the routes from the Kumano Kodo Tourism Office.

Nakahechi (Imperial Route) - 38 kilometers - 68 kilometers until Nachi Falls: the main inland pilgrimage path from Tanabe to Kumano Hongu Taisha, forested and well-preserved. This is by far the most popular route, thanks to the established tourism infrastructure, guided tours, and accommodation network. According to data from a few years ago, 80% of the travelers who visit Kumano Kodo hike the Nakahechi Route.

Iseji (Eastern Route) - 170 kilometers: the long approach from Ise Grand Shrine to Kumano Hayama Taisha, with varied terrain, (gorgeous) stone-paved paths like Magose Pass, and many coastal sections featuring small fishing villages. This is the best route to witness coastal rural village life in Japan and, in parts, sadly, to catch a glimpse of the country's semi-ghost towns, which are grappling with severe depopulation.

Kohechi (Mountain Route) - 70 kilometers: a demanding high-mountain traverse linking Mount Koya to Kumano Hongu Taisha, with steep passes and remote ridges.

Ohechi (Coastal Route) - 120 kilometers: a seaside route along the Kii Peninsula from Tanabe to Kumano Nachi Taisha, with ocean views but not as many well-maintained sections as in other routes.

Hiking Nakahechi: Nachi Falls to Takijiri

For our Nakahechi hike, due to accommodation constraints and the fact that I could take only one day off work to extend the long weekend, we had just four days.

Our original plan was to start at Nachi Falls and cover as much ground as possible toward Takijiri. We would stay in Koguchi for two nights to tackle the Ogumotori-goe and Kogumotori-goe sections, and then move on to Kiri no Sato in Takahara, one of the loveliest lodges on the route, for our final night, after completing the Hongu Taisha to Hosshinmon-oji section.

The rest of this post is available to paid Letters from Japan subscribers. Each monthly letter is free to read when published and becomes part of the paid archive when a new monthly letter is published. Paid subscribers receive continuing access to the complete archive of more than 70 posts, including all past monthly letters, additional travel diaries, walking itineraries and other Japan travel resources. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

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Just a few days ago, snow was falling in Tokyo, possibly making the experts at the Japan Meteorological Agency rush back to their desks to update the sakura forecast. Only last week, the latest predictions had pointed to March 18th as the start of the season in Tokyo, earlier than usual. But after weeks of uninterrupted sunshine, mid-March has brought not only the expected moody, cloudy skies but also low single-digit temperatures, which may push the cherry blossoms well into April, as it did last year.1

The sakura season and the rush it brings will soon be followed by Golden Week in early May, marking the country’s busiest period for domestic travel.

Things will then slow down a little, starting in June with the arrival of the rainy season, which will be despised at first but then dearly missed once the real summer begins, brutal in the cities but a little more tolerable up in the mountains.

But despite all this seasonal talk, and after last month’s letter, Hiking Japan: From Okinawa to Hokkaido, which covered some scenically rewarding trails across the country before the hiking season begins in late spring, this month’s letter turns to a topic, an activity, an experience, perhaps even the very meaning of life itself (certainly for the Japanese), that is largely independent of the calendar, the seasons, and even the weather: hot springs, in other words, onsen experiences in Japan.

We will begin with a bit of background on Japan`s favorite national activity and then move on to some of my favorite onsen experiences across the country, from wild hot springs and rustic baths to onsen villages and resort-style retreats.

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One of the most thrilling aspects of living in Japan has, somewhat ironically, been the mundanity of everyday life and the ritual-driven rhythm that brings a great deal of calm with it. And when it comes to everyday rituals in Japan, few things are more defining than its onsen and sento culture, the latter of which was recently in the spotlight with its striking appearance in Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days.

Before we go any further, it may help to briefly clarify the distinction between the two. Sento refers to public bathhouses served by heated tap water, and it is written using the kanji for “coin” (銭) and “hot water” (湯). These neighborhood baths can be found in abundance across the country, including many here in Tokyo. What separates them from the onsen is not only the source of the water used but also the distinct aesthetic, with tiled bathing halls and large painted murals, most famously of Mount Fuji, behind the baths.

Onsen, the topic of this month’s letter, literally means “hot spring” in Japanese (it uses the kanji for “hot/warm” (温) and “spring/water source” (泉)) and refers to naturally heated spring water that meets criteria set by the country’s Hot Springs Act.2 While some may have aesthetics similar to a sento with painted tiles, the visual atmosphere usually relies more on the surrounding nature than on the interior design. The term onsen is used rather generously in travel writing and may refer to the hot spring itself, a bathing facility, an entire village, or even a simple natural pool filled with hot spring water.

It is difficult to overstate the role of onsen in Japanese culture. Strongly linked to many of its defining aspects, such as omotenashi, the unique form of Japanese hospitality, and ideas of purification rooted in Shinto and Buddhism, references to onsen can be found everywhere in the country, including in literature and even anime, such as Spirited Away, which takes place in a haunted old bathhouse.

Perhaps the most captivating, and for many visitors, a little intimidating element of the onsen experience is the notion of “naked communication” - hadaka no tsukiai - that these facilities gently reinforce.

You might have heard that a visit to a Japanese onsen requires one to strip off all clothes (most are gender-segregated, with a few exceptions, more on that below). It can feel a little daunting at first, but not too hard to get used to (speaking from personal experience as a rather shy person).

In addition to hygienic considerations, the concept of naked communication is based on the idea of leaving all signs of social status at the door and sharing the space on equal footing, often leading to more open and meaningful conversations. And I have rarely felt as welcome in this country as during the quiet early morning hours in a rural onsen, where elderly ladies often show nothing but adorable enthusiasm at seeing a foreigner enjoying a part of their culture, even if that foreigner sometimes looks as though she is sitting in fire rather than in hot water3.

Celebrating public baths as communal bonding spaces is, in fact, not entirely unfamiliar to someone from my culture, which has its own hamam - better known globally as the Turkish bath tradition. While the practice differs in the details4 (you are expected to wear a peshtemal in a Turkish bath, the marble interiors are quite magnificent, and a vigorous body scrub is part of the ritual, highly recommended), hamams have also long served as communal spaces of relaxation and socialization, dating back to Byzantine and later Ottoman times, and are now going through quite a revival period with some astonishing renovation work. Yet in my country, the experience is often approached more like a treat, something akin to an occasional day at the spa, rather than a weekly, and for some even daily habit, as it is in Japan.

After all this talk of communal nakedness, in the service of barrierless communication, let’s turn to some specific destinations across the country where you can experience the ritual for yourself.

Situated in one of the most volcanically active zones on earth and home to 111 active volcanoes, Japan’s onsen menu is extensive. With around 27,000 hot spring sources across the country, serving about 3,000 onsen areas, these healing baths, in addition to daily use, also remain one of the leading drivers of domestic tourism.

“Onsen-hopping” trips, covering several hot springs in a single trip, are a beloved concept that has also been lovingly adopted by many of the country’s foreign residents.

Kyushu Island, the “hottest” island in this land of fire, is home to roughly 35% of Japan’s hot springs. But with more than 27,000 sources nationwide, you are rarely far from one wherever you are in Japan, and below are some of my favorites, grouped by category: wild onsen, rustic baths, onsen villages, and resort-style retreats.

The rest of this post is available to paid Letters from Japan subscribers. Each monthly letter is free to read when published and becomes part of the paid archive after a new monthly letter is published. Paid subscribers receive continuing access to the complete archive of more than 70 posts, including all past monthly letters, additional travel diaries, walking itineraries and other Japan travel resources. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

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According to Japan’s traditional micro-season calendar, which divides the year into 24 solar terms and then into 72 micro-seasons, each marked by adorably descriptive natural events such as “fish emerging from the ice,” spring has already begun.

Yet last Sunday, just as “the east wind was melting the ice” and “bush warblers were about to start singing in the mountains,” with plum blossoms already out across the city, Tokyo seemed to defy these seasonal signs, crowning this much colder-than-usual winter with a snowstorm.

Snow is rare in Tokyo and, fearing it might disappear at any moment, I went out at 3 a.m., moving from one neighbourhood to another, struggling to decide which ones to cover, aware that the show could end at any second.

Apart from the joy of experiencing the city at such a slow pace, this was also my first time seeing plum blossoms in the snow. I was glad for the scenery, though worried the petals might not survive the weight (they did). It was certainly a beautiful day, one that gave me new reasons to appreciate this wonderful city.

Snow, after all, always seems to bring out the soft side of big cities, even when it may not truly exist. My hometown, Istanbul, adopts a timid aura the moment the first flakes begin to fall, becoming unusually approachable. For a while, you forget the intense chaos and demands it throws at you on any other day. It lets you engage with it differently, even feel a little in charge, setting aside its otherwise commanding presence, the one that otherwise dominates your days and, if you let it, would happily take over your entire life.

In Tokyo’s case, though, snow works a little differently. It strips the city of its excuses for hiding its true self. It puts everything into slow motion, making it easier to see it for what it really is, beneath the fast pace and high-tech image amplified by that big façade: the world’s largest small town disguised as a metropolis.

It is like a little boy wearing his father’s jacket - a city made of thousands of tiny villages that together feel much larger, and a little scarier, than they are individually. But the experience of living in this surprisingly gentle city is better reflected in one of those tiny villages than in its grander, slightly intimidating outer shell.

So, on that fine Sunday, I thought how lucky passersby were to experience Tokyo at its softest, which is, in fact, its truest self.

Unless Tokyo has another surprise in store for us, this was likely my last snow encounter of the year, and therefore the last snowy edition of Letters from Japan for a while, after January’s Snow Country and, more recently, early February’s Shibu Onsen and the Snow Monkeys.

But now, if we trust Japan’s micro-season calendar, which says that “the grass will soon sprout, and trees bud”, it may be a good time to start imagining warmer days and to delve a little deeper into one of the main underlying themes of this newsletter: hiking in Japan.

So, in this month’s letter, I come to you with the geographical breakdown of some of my favorite trails in the country, covering peak hunts, island traverses, mangrove kayaking routes, pilgrimage paths, and a few entirely DIY walks.

Naturally, the list includes only the trails I have personally experienced1 and is therefore far from comprehensive. You will notice that the country’s hiking mecca, the Japanese Alps, known for its hair-raisingly exposed trails, is represented with only a few routes. For those looking for a much more exhaustive list and technical guidance, David Lowe’s thoughtful blog, Ridgelineimages, is a wonderful resource that will have you safely covered.

The format of this letter will be similar to September’s Reading Japan: From Hokkaido to Okinawa, jumping between regions and offering brief mentions of the trails I love in each one, but this time in reverse order.

We will start in Okinawa, on one of its southernmost islands, Iriomote; move on to another island destination, Yakushima; cross the mainland slowly with various stops along the way, occasionally leaving it again for smaller islands; and finish in Hokkaido, first exploring the mainland and then crossing to one of its farthest islands.

Okinawa is not one of the first destinations that come to mind when one thinks about hiking in Japan. The islands are better known for their swimming waters, some of the best in the world, and their locals, who long ago unlocked the secret to the “eternal youth”, which, in their own words, has more to do with the diet than hiking.

Yet the archipelago, consisting of 160 islands, is also blessed with subtropical rainforests and mangrove fields that you can kayak through, offering a jungle-like hiking experience - complete with hidden waterfalls - that cannot be found on the mainland.

I don’t think I fully appreciated the climatic diversity this long, skinny country harbors until I visited Iriomote Island, one of the southernmost islands in the Okinawa chain, in January. While Hokkaido, with its subarctic climate, was in the harshest phase of its endless winter, we were kayaking and hiking through the jungles of Iriomote, as if it were a summer day.

Iriomote, the second-largest of the Okinawa islands, is almost entirely covered by forest and mangroves and is home to the endemic Iriomote cat, a nocturnal species found nowhere else in the world. With only around ten percent of its land devoted to urban development, it is no surprise that the island, albeit a little late, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2021.

The Pinaisara Falls and Sangara Falls trails, both beginning with a kayak journey through mangrove forests and ending at a waterfall after a dense climb through the jungle, were two routes I got to experience - both making me feel a little ashamed that I had, until then, only visited Okinawa for its beaches and its otherworldly swimming waters.

Moving north from Okinawa, but not quite yet on the mainland, we arrive at another island whose hiking-related reputation extends far beyond Japan. Some call it the place where it rains thirty-five days a month. “The Alps of the Ocean” is another nickname favored by travel brochures.

These cheesy descriptions point to two essential truths about Yakushima, which, in fact, is one of the least cheesy places I have been to in Japan. It is rainy, the wettest place in the country, and home to an unusually diverse climate, where, on the same day, you can move from a subtropical coast to near-subarctic peaks, including Kyushu’s highest mountain, Mount Miyanoura.

The heart-shaped island, also on the UNESCO World Heritage list, owes much of its global fame to Hayao Miyazaki, who reportedly drew inspiration from its moss forests for Princess Mononoke. While Shiratani Unsuikyo, home to Miyazaki’s moss forest, is a beautiful trail, the island traverse hike, ideally done over two days, offers a more memorable chance to experience Yakushima’s unique ecosystem and climate.

The traverse, despite its intimidating name, is not especially challenging, particularly when paired with a stay at one of the mountain huts along the way. While it is served by numerous trailheads, the more common route, which I also followed, starts at Yodogawa, crosses the river in the early morning light (the eternal kind on a sunny day), climbs to Mount Miyanoura by around noon, and then descends through a dark, deliciously spooky forest to one of the huts.

The next day takes you to Jomon Sugi, the oldest tree in Japan, with the option to finish either at Arakawa by following old train tracks for the final two hours, or via a detour to Shiratani Unsuikyo for a longer but visually more rewarding ending.

Now taking a little break from the small islands off the mainland, we move to a much larger main one: Kyushu, also known as the land of fire.

Among the various trails that I got to experience on this highly volcanic island, the one that I repeatedly return to is the Kuju Mountains.

Kuju is the neighbour of the better-known Mount Aso, with which it shares the national park’s name: Aso-Kuju National Park.

While Aso, one of the world’s largest and most active volcanoes, with a massive caldera, is geologically the more interesting of the two, the Kuju side of the park always feels scenically more enticing to me, especially in late May, when its various peaks bloom with azaleas. It is also one of the rare mountain regions in a country famous for brutally steep trails, where the effort you put in feels almost too small for the scenery you are rewarded with.

The Kuju range is home to various trails. One can easily spend a week up there, exploring a new route each day. So, if you have time, staying in the mountains for a few nights is a great option, either at the ever-welcoming Hokkein Sanso or at one of the campgrounds. But if time is tight, the day hikes are also worth the trip.

The rest of this post is available to paid Letters from Japan subscribers. Each monthly letter is free to read when published and becomes part of the paid archive when a new monthly letter is published. Paid subscribers receive continuing access to the complete archive of more than 70 posts, including all past monthly letters, additional travel diaries, walking itineraries and other Japan travel resources. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

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Despite the blue skies, the city has been much colder than usual this winter1 and is now bracing for a weekend of snow. Meanwhile, many other regions of the country are already deep in snow, causing transportation disruptions that could impact the outcome of this weekend`s general elections.

And this past weekend, I was in one of the country`s snowiest prefectures, once the proud host of the 1998 Winter Olympics, an event that put the region’s ski resorts on the international radar and brought almost rock-star fame to its furry inhabitants.2

From my not-so-subtle entry, and of course the photo, you might have guessed that this month’s extra post for paid subscribers is about Nagano Prefecture. It covers a recent weekend stay in the small onsen town of Shibu, and a brief but memorable encounter with the prefecture's most famous residents: the snow monkeys.

But before delving into the Nagano weekend, a quick note on what’s coming up next in the newsletter.

After this monthly/annual subscriber-only post, the monthly letter, scheduled for mid-February, will focus on my favorite hiking trails in Japan, starting in Hokkaido and going all the way down to the southernmost islands of Okinawa, including Iriomote. It will follow a format similar to Reading Japan: From Hokkaido to Okinawa, with quick jumps between regions and brief mentions of the trails I love in each one.

Going forward, now that I have my Saturdays back and can travel outside Tokyo on weekends, the extra posts will shift back toward rural Japan, hiking trails, and smaller cities beyond the capital. In March, I’ll be re-walking the Nakahechi Route of the Kumano Kodo with friends visiting from Turkey, and that month’s paid subscibers post will be a detailed guide to a trail I first walked eight years ago and still get the most questions about.

There will also be a few more One Fine Day–style, city-focused posts in the spring, including one on Nagasaki, one of my favorite cities in Japan that I never get tired of revisiting, as well as another on Matsumoto, one of the most strategically located mid-sized towns in the country and an ideal base for a stay combining urban wonders with nature-focused day trips.

You can find a full list of currently available paid-subscriber-only posts here, with links to both the Substack and website versions. Monthly letters, available to all subscribers, will also continue as usual.

As always, thank you for your interest in this newsletter and for the kindness with which you engage with the stories. It means the world to me.

If you wrote to me with a question, I replied to every email I received. If my reply did not reach you, it may have ended up in your spam folder (I also moved my email to a more reliable host a while ago, to minimize delivery issues). If you reach out again, I will do my best to reply as quickly as possible.

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A weekend trip to Shibu Onsen and Jigokudani Valley

Now on to our topic.

While I had long been curious about Shibu Onsen, located in the Yamanouchi area of Nagano Prefecture and far more easily accessible from Tokyo than many of the Tohoku onsen I regularly visit, I was more hesitant about its better-known neighbour, Jigokudani Valley, home to a large colony of wild Japanese macaques known for their fondness for the natural hot springs.

I had no doubt the experience would be visually and emotionally moving, but I tend to feel uneasy about trips built around a single focus (hence my complicated relationship with sakura), which made it easy for me to keep pushing Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park further down my never-ending running list of weekend trips from Tokyo.

The area, however, came back on my radar recently after two well-traveled friends included it in their two-week Japan itinerary and found the experience well worth the effort. Around the same time, I was also looking for a quick, easy-to-plan snowy weekend escape from Tokyo, before the next few weekends filled up with trips to Kyoto, where I would be happily accompanying different groups of close friends on their first visits to Japan.

So that is the rather unexciting background to this otherwise fairly satisfying trip, which makes up the topic of this month’s extra post.

Keys to the Onsen Kingdom

The hot spring village of Shibu, reportedly discovered more than 1,300 years ago, features narrow cobblestone streets lined with several ryokan, including Kanaguya, which may or may not have inspired the visuals for Miyazaki`s Spirited Away.

The small town is home to nine community-run historic hot spring baths scattered along its narrow streets. What makes a stay here special is the “key” each ryokan provides to overnight guests, granting exclusive access to all nine baths, which are otherwise closed to day visitors.

This creates a very different atmosphere from many other hot spring towns, where each facility is entered through a reception area and a ticket counter. In Shibu, by contrast, you simply unlock the door to a semi-private bathhouse, shared with other overnight guests and, of course, with locals.

While the village itself is already attractive enough to warrant a visit on its own, Shibu also has the blessing, or the burden, of being within easy walking distance of one of Japan`s most famous winter sights: the snow monkeys of Jigokudani Valley.

Shiga Kogen, one of the venues of the 1998 Winter Olympics, is also just a 20-minute drive away, meaning this part of Nagano is rarely short of visitors, especially in winter.

While a day trip to Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park from Tokyo is possible, most visitors choose to stay overnight, either in Shibu Onsen, the neighbouring and larger onsen town of Yudanaka Onsen, or up in Shiga Kogen. Nagano City, less than an hour`s drive away, is also an option, especially for its more affordable and wider range of accommodation.

For a more relaxed schedule, I decided to make it a two-night, two-day trip, leaving Tokyo on Friday evening right after work and spending the night in Nagano City. Thanks to the Shinkansen, which took me there in under an hour and a half, I arrived at my hotel just before 9 p.m.3

The overnight stay in Nagano allowed me to take the earliest train on Saturday morning4, bound for Yudanaka Onsen area,5 which is then connected to Jigokudani’s entrance by public bus. I wanted to arrive at the park right around the opening, leaving time for other activities (which, as it turned out, were fairly limited).

Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park

I was, to my surprise, among the very few people who got off the bus at Jigokudani's entrance, while most of the others, along with their skis and snowboards, stayed on for the final stop, Shiga Kogen.

The first part of the visit to the snow monkey park, a gentle, mandatory 30–35-minute walk through the forest, was also unexpectedly quiet.6 I had the trail entirely to myself at around 8 a.m., as most people were probably sensible enough not to brave the freezing cold by standing motionless in front of the ticket office7 for 30 minutes before opening, choosing to arrive a little later in the day.

At that early hour, around 9 a.m., when Jigokudani Snow Monkey Park opens, the small hot spring area where the monkeys gather and are fed by staff had only fifteen to twenty visitors. Despite the below-zero temperatures, we seemed to share an unspoken, collective childlike excitement at witnessing such a surreal and heartwarming scene.

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Despite all that is going on in the world, I hope the new year brings us all some level of personal peace and things to look forward to.

This is the first Letter from Japan of the year, delivered to you from windy Tokyo, which feels much colder than usual this winter. This raises my hopes for some snowfall this year, not the usual slashy, but the real kind. If that relatively rare event happens, I will make sure to cover it in one of the future newsletters. But before that, this month, I bring you snow, lots of it, complete with icy waterfalls, from somewhere else: the northern country, otherwise known as the Savage Island or more descriptively as Hokkaido.

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What took me to −10 °C Hokkaido this time, right after a grueling 13-hour flight back to Tokyo from Istanbul, was, among several other tangible and intangible reasons (all outlined below), the need to escape the depressive mood that hangs over Tokyo in the first few days of the new year, a city I otherwise find surprisingly soothing, despite its size.

Most people leave town or stay home with their families; all the museums and shops, including grocery stores, close; and streets outside the temple areas1 become ghostly empty, testing the limits of even the most introverted among us, including me. To make things worse, there is also always deceptively inviting sunshine and blue skies, which creates a Pluribus-like anxiety, with all the possibilities outside, yet something deeply missing. While this all on paper sounds like a good excuse to relax at home and indulge in endless streaming, reading, or itinerary planning before getting back to work, I had never managed to make good use of that time in the past.

So instead of kicking off the new year in an uninspired mood in Tokyo, I now spend those first few days in a tiny town called Biei, located in central Hokkaido.

The town offers the perfect antidote to the depressive mood of Tokyo: a cozy hotel, a few restaurants that gracefully remain open even on the first few days of the new year, a web of easily walkable country roads surrounding the town and cutting through endless snow fields, and, more importantly, perfectly calibrated street lighting that Edward Hopper would approve of - adding a great deal of charm to the town`s often empty streets. There is still a sense of solitude, but an impressively deep and pleasurable one, and one that comes with one of the most distinctive winter landscapes one can find.

Biei, home to fewer than 10,000 residents, and not modestly but rightfully named as “beautiful crystal” in Japanese (美瑛町), remains reliably covered in snow for almost half of the year, starting in November.

The area, as rural as Japan gets, is surprisingly rich in landmarks, the number of which could easily rival those of midsize cities like Kanazawa. But there is a twist: the majority of Biei`s landmarks are trees, which the tourism office promotes with a helpful map and affectionate names like “Puffy” or “Parent and Child”. There is also, of course, the famous Christmas Tree, the Mona Lisa of the Biei area - a lone spruce which, I believe, attracts hundreds of visitors every day in the winter season, leading to strict traffic control in the area.

The rest of this post is available to paid Letters from Japan subscribers. Each monthly letter is free to read when published and becomes part of the paid archive when a new monthly letter is published. Paid subscribers receive continuing access to the complete archive of more than 70 posts, including all past monthly letters, additional travel diaries, walking itineraries and other Japan travel resources. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

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I hope you are having a lovely December. Tokyo is just coming out of a spectacular fall-colors season (one of the most vivid we have experienced in recent years) and easing into the Jingle Bells time of year, with the tune on repeat play in almost every restaurant and store across the country. Despite the country’s cheerful devotion to celebrating what is otherwise a religious holiday as a cultural event, the overall mood can sometimes feel a little too forced, but it is December after all, the one and only festive season, and I’ll take it in any form.

This is the eleventh and final monthly letter of 2025 (for the avoidance of doubt, the months do not work differently in Japan; I just combined the June/July letter into one). Over the past year, there were also a number of additional posts for monthly and annual subscribers, including multi-day itineraries, the One Fine Day city series, and Japan trip-planning guides, all outlined here. As always, thank you for your interest in this newsletter and for reading along this year. Sharing this space with you all has been a truly meaningful experience.

In this final letter of 2025, I come with a quick round-up of the year through four photos paired with the four most-read letters of the year, a brief section on my favorite travel reads of the year (and an invitation to share yours to inspire 2026 reading lists), and the results of the annual nonsensical travel poll from the November letter, which you can still vote for.1 The usual once-a-year holiday discount is also now available until the end of the year.

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The Year in Photos

Despite the lack of big trips like last year’s Great Ocean Walk in Australia or 2023’s Great Walks of New Zealand, 2025 ended up being the year I took the most photos. In addition to some truly awe-inspiring scenery, courtesy of Japan’s nature, I think there was also a technical reason behind it.

I had been in a bit of a limbo with my camera equipment for the past few years. After saying a final goodbye to my beloved 12-year-old Canon 5D Mark II in early 2023, I switched to Sony’s highly praised mirrorless system, drawn by its lighter weight. But despite giving the Sony A7II nearly two years, I simply couldn’t get used to the feel of the camera in my hands or to Sony’s cooler color palette. Late last year, I returned to Canon with the R6, one of their more affordable full-frame mirrorless cameras, and immediately remembered the joy of taking photos and the comfort of using a camera that fits like a glove rather than a joystick (sorry, Sony). It’s a system that works better for me, and I don’t plan to leave it again.

So after this unsolicited behind-the-scenes section, on to this year’s recap, with four photos from four seasons, each accompanying one of the four most-read letters of the year.

Winter - the Snow Country

Snow does look good on Japan, especially at night under those glowing, dense signboard lights, which make snowy cities almost as appealing as mountain or onsen getaways.

The best winter moment of this year came on one of those urban stays during a four-day trip I took with my mother to the Kanazawa-Shirakawa-Takayama area. It was early February, and all three of our stops were entirely covered with snow, skilfully hiding any aesthetic shortcomings these destinations may or may not have and delivering the perfect winter scenery that Japan is rightfully famous for.

During our stay in Kanazawa, after a full day visiting Kenrokuen Garden with its frozen ponds, the city’s museums, and the Omicho fish market, we headed to Il Mare in the Katamachi district for dinner. On the way, we were caught in a sudden snowstorm that, to my surprise - given how common snow is in Kanazawa - filled the main streets with a kind of joyous chaos, while the narrow side streets stayed quiet and wonderfully cinematic. The whole atmosphere felt like a movie set, with color tones that reminded me of the TV show Midnight Diner (perfect comfort watching), so soothing that you want to be part of the frame.

I was very happy to experience such a warm and picture-perfect moment with my mother. Our restaurant was right on the street featured in the above photo, and we watched the snowstorm outside while enjoying a feast served by a lovely chef–assistant duo in a counter-style setting. It was a beautiful night, and in so many different ways, uniquely Japanese (despite the Italian food).

The trip, along with a few other winter destination suggestions in Japan, was the focus of the February Letter - Snow Falling on Cedars, which became the most-read post of this newsletter since its launch. I think we all love winter landscapes, in whichever form they come.

Spring - a Complicated Matter

Spring, as it tends to do, came a little too suddenly, when I could have used a few more weeks of winter to stay in my cocoon.

But I live in Japan, a country that worships the spring and the pink petals it brings, and I was determined to play my part this year and embrace the season properly. In all my five years here, this was the first time I traveled outside Tokyo during the sakura season, adding one more head to the crowds in Kyoto that the city is infamous for, especially at that time of year.

On the three-day trip, I stayed in the city for only one full day and used the other two for side trips: to re-walk some sections of the Kyoto Trail that I first hiked in November 2024, and to visit Mount Yoshino, famous for its tens of thousands of sakura trees.

Despite seeing numerous photographs, I was a little skeptical about the scenery at Mount Yoshino. It looked almost too flawless, too good to be true, and I assumed there would be a catch (like a concrete, abandoned building (not exactly rare in Japan) sitting in the middle of otherwise spectacular scenery). But no: Mount Yoshino, with its tens of thousands of cherry trees, was even more spectacular than in the photos and offered one of the most surreal visual experiences of the year. I was honestly a little too star-struck to enjoy it fully on my first visit, so I hope to return next year and take it all in a little more calmly.

This three-day sakura trip was the subject of the April letter — Sakura in Bloom, Spring in Waiting — which became the third most-read post of the year. Sakura is, and will probably always be, a compelling subject that readers expect to find in a newsletter devoted to travel in Japan - even when it ironically appears alongside the political heartbreak my country experienced this past spring, as it did in that letter.

Summer - the Islands of Confinement

December is the month of joy and gratitude, so I don’t want to bring down the mood of this letter by talking too much about summers in Japan, which have only two redeeming qualities: one is called Hokkaido, and the other is Okinawa, two nature-dominated destinations that shine in the summer.

This year, like every summer, I had one long-weekend escape to my favorite small Okinawan island, Tokashiki, where the humidity was far from pleasant but somehow emotionally tolerable, thanks to the endlessly swimmable and kayakable Kerama Blue waters. July’s letter, a love letter to this tiny island of 700 residents, too cool to care about its own objectively gorgeous scenery, Okinawa: The Reluctant Paradise, was the fourth most-read post of the year.

Small island destinations in Japan are always an adventure. They are not necessarily idyllic in the way one might expect from summer heavens; the architectural choices, shaped by the reality of typhoons, are often rather bland. Over the years, though, I’ve grown to appreciate the contrast between the uninspiring built environment, the residents’ wonderfully unbothered attitude toward the beauty around them, and the truly outstanding nature that surrounds it all.

Autumn - a New Chapter

Then came the autumn season, which I always declare as my favorite in Japan, even though I am possibly just as enamored with the country’s winter.

On a personal level, autumn brought one of the most meaningful experiences of my year - despite being a very anti-travel one. I was offered the opportunity to teach a law class in the English program of the graduate school connected to the research institute where I work. Being able to share a space every Saturday morning with JICA scholars from various governments across Asia and Africa has been a truly rewarding experience, and I am immensely grateful for the opportunity.2 Learning from their perspectives and sharing mine have genuinely been a highlight of my year (and perhaps of this decade of my life, which will reach its first half in less than two weeks), and I honestly had no idea how nourishing such an opportunity could be when I was first offered the position last year. I am still terrified before every class, but the experience continues to feel deeply worthwhile.

As I needed to be in Tokyo every Saturday throughout the autumn except for one weekend, I did not take as many fall-colors trips as usual. And since the season was already heavily covered in previous years, I didn’t structure any of this year’s monthly letters around it either. The second most-read post of this year, and the most-read of the autumn season, therefore ended up being more of a stay-at-home piece: the September letter, Reading Japan: From Hokkaido to Okinawa, where I listed some of my favorite Japan-related reads in a loosely geographical order.

With so many weekends spent in Tokyo, I also put together a One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo post for monthly and annual subscribers, to accompany last year’s One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto, a one-day walking itinerary covering some of the city’s most beloved foliage spots. The only weekend we didn’t have class was the first week of November, which allowed me to take my usual fall trip to Tohoku, this time focusing on onsen stays, with four different hot springs in four nights (Tohoku Onsen Hopping).

When I look at the year purely from the perspective of my life in Japan, it was a beautiful one, a year when I felt more settled than before, a little calmer about my travel rhythm, and, helped in part by a work schedule that kept me in the city on most weekends, able to enjoy Tokyo more deeply.

Favorite Travel Reads of the Year

While I adore traveling in Japan, and this year’s travels were mainly domestic, I still miss the centrality of Istanbul and the quick trips that location allowed. So, to stay connected to other places and keep the inspiration alive, I lean on a lot of travel reading, even for places I will probably never visit.

The first book I read this year was one of the best destination-related reads I’ve come across in a long time. Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller tells the fictional story of a recluse from Stockholm who moves to one of the world’s remotest northern settlements, Svalbard, a place I once visited during its 24-hour daylight season and which also appeared in this year’s Travel Poll. The book is a beautiful ode to the pull of dark nature and to a community of misfits. It was one of those books I genuinely didn’t want to end (even though the ending slightly betrayed the understated tone of the rest).

Right after finishing it, I picked up another Svalbard story recommended by a fellow Substacker: A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter. A first-person, real-life account of an Austrian woman who spent the winter of 1934–35 on the island to accompany her husband. It is a beautifully and humbly told story of both physical and emotional endurance, with a deeply felt affection for remote destinations.

Another travel-adjacent book I enjoyed this year was Everest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World, a recent addition to the many Everest books, but this time focusing not on individual journeys or expeditions, but on the mountain’s commercialization. The book telling the history of guided expeditions to the world's highest peak was quite a page-turner, and I thought it handled both sides of the argument fairly.

What were some of your favorite travel-related reads this year?

Travel Poll 2025 Results

Now on to our last topic. November’s letter took a very sharp diversion from our regular programming and came with a travel poll of 15 absolutely nonsensical (and extremely hypothetical) questions. The poll has been open since November 12th. Some of the results, which you can review here, were expected, like the very close call between East and West if one had to choose only one for the rest of their travels, or choosing the Louvre over the Pyramids to save if we were going to lose one forever (with the Louvre perhaps benefiting from its recent mishap).

Among all the results, though, the one that surprised me the most was how few votes a week on the Moon received compared to a two-year free travel pass on Earth. When I first drafted that question, I was convinced the Moon would be the absolute winner, so I increased the free-travel option from one year to two to give it a bit of a fighting chance. But with 90% choosing the travel pass, I suspect the Moon wouldn’t stand a chance even against a six-month option on Earth. I honestly blame the billionaires for this one; with their self-entitled approach to space, they seem to have turned many of us off the idea entirely.

You can still vote (since, for reasons still unclear, this poll will remain open in perpetuity) or review the results here: Travel Poll 2025.

And that brings us to the end of this year’s, possibly, last letter. I hope you have a lovely holiday season.

We’re lucky to have two weeks off from work, so I will visit Istanbul for one of them, and hopefully spend the other in Hokkaido for some winter walks. I always plan to send an Istanbul-focused letter, but never got to it, so perhaps there may be one final photo-only dispatch toward the end of the year, combining Istanbul and Hokkaido, two of the most contrasting places on earth. As always, thank you for being here. It truly means the world to me.

Until next time,

Burcu

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P.S. In addition to the monthly letters, below is a quick recap of the extra itinerary and planning-focused posts available on the newsletter for monthly and annual subscribers. You can access each one here on Substack or on a single page on my website.

One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo (December 2025)

Tohoku Onsen Hopping: Four Nights, Four Hot Springs (November 2025)

Tokyo Eateries: the Non-Gourmet Version (October 2025)

Autumn Colors Trip to Aomori: Itinerary Suggestion (August 2025)

One Fine Day in Kanazawa (July 2025)

Cycling the Shimanami Kaido in Two Days (June 2025)

Japan Trip Planning Q&A Series (three posts) (February - April 2025)

Winter Trip to Biei in Hokkaido (four posts) (January 2025)

Hiking the Kyoto Trail (five posts) (November 2024)

One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto (September 2024)

Walking Goto Islands (eight posts) (March 2024)

Hello - this is Burcu!

Thank you for checking out Letters from Japan, a monthly newsletter featuring travel stories, photography, and observations from across Japan. Paid subscribers also receive access to additional itinerary-focused guides and other features, explained below.

Below is a quick overview of the subscription plans and a breakdown of the extra posts available to monthly and annual subscribers.

As explained on the subscription page, the newsletter includes one monthly letter, featuring travel stories and destinations from Japan, and additional itinerary-focused posts for paid subscribers.

Each new monthly Letter from Japan is free for all subscribers until the next monthly letter is published. It then becomes part of the paid archive, where paid subscribers have unlimited access to the complete collection. Some past editions include:

• Hiking Kumano Kodo: the Nakahechi Route (April 2026) – a diary of a recent hike along Japan’s beloved pilgrimage route, complete with an FAQ section and trail notes.

• Reading Japan: From Hokkaido to Okinawa (September 2025) – a literary journey through Japan from north to south, with a selection of books to accompany your travels.

• Okinawa: The Reluctant Paradise (July 2025) – exploring the dreamy Kerama Islands and their intriguing history.

• Hiking Japan: From Okinawa to Hokkaido (February 2026) – my favorite hiking trails across the country, from Iriomote Island in Okinawa to Rebun Island in Hokkaido.

• For the Love of Ritual - Onsen Hopping Across Japan (March 2026) - an introduction to the bathing culture in the country and some of my favorite Japanese hot springs.

• An Ode to the Snow Country (January 2026) – a letter of appreciation for Hokkaido and its harsh winters.

• Snow Falling on Cedars - Winter Trips in Japan (February 2025) - a letter outlining some of my favorite winter trips in Japan, inspired by a recent trip to Kanazawa-Shirakawa-Takayama.

• Tokyo - the Giant with a Heart of Gold (December 2024) - a letter about my daily life in Tokyo, a city I deeply appreciate.

In addition to the monthly letters, paid subscribers receive extra posts, typically more itinerary-focused (such as a four-day autumn-colors trip to Aomori).

Annual subscribers also have access to a personal Zoom call to discuss their travel plans for Japan, or, if preferred, a series of email exchanges.

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Overview of the Additional Paid Content

This page offers an overview of the additional paid content (in addition to full access to the monthly letters), organized by category, and is updated periodically as the archive grows. For convenience, you can also access the full archive on my website, where all subscriber-only posts are organized by category (including the five-part Kyoto Trail series): Letters from Japan: Resource Page.

The idea is simply to make browsing easier, especially if you’re planning a trip to Japan. For example, Substack requires multi-day travel diaries to be published as separate posts, whereas on the website, you can read them as single, complete entries with a table of contents.

The resource page itself is public, and the individual posts become accessible with the subscriber password (sent automatically upon joining), after a short preview section.

Below is a categorical overview of the archive, with links to both the website and Substack versions.

Destination Itineraries

These are itinerary-focused posts, offering suggestions for planning a day or multi-day trip, depending on the destination.

One Fine Day in Nagasaki + Website Link

Shibu Onsen and the Snow Monkeys of Nagano + Website Link

One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto + Website Link

One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo + Website Link

One Fine Day in Kanazawa + Website Link

Onsen Hopping Through Tohoku: Four Nights, Four Hot Springs + Website Link

Tokyo Eateries: the Non-Gourmet Version + Website Link

Fall Colors Trip to Aomori + Website Link

Biking the Shimanami Kaido in Two Days + Website Link

Travel diaries - as single posts, with a table of contents

Since the travel diaries are posted on Substack as separate entries—sometimes up to eight, as in the Walking Goto Islands series—they can be challenging to review for trip planning. You can review them as a single post on the webpage (complete with a table of contents) or as separate posts on Substack.

So far, there are three sets of travel diaries available as single posts:

Winter Trip to Hokkaido + Substack link

Hiking the Kyoto Trail + Substack link

Walking the Goto Islands + Substack link

The pages are mobile-friendly, but if you have the option, the desktop version on the website is custom-designed to make these lengthy diaries easier to read. While I will continue posting the travel diary series on Substack, once completed, they will also be continually added to the website as a single post.

Japan Trip Planning Series

These are logistics-heavy posts, independent of destination, aiming to bring a bit of clarity to Japan trip planning, which often feels unnecessarily confusing (even to me, despite living here).

Japan Trip Planning Q&A: Transportation + Susbtack link

Japan Trip Planning Q&A: Accommodation + Substack link

Japan Trip Planning Q&A: Miscellaneous + Substack link

Whenever I publish on Substack, I also upload the same content to my website (for the security of hosting it myself), and you can find the paid-subscriber posts appear on the relevant page just a few hours after they’re emailed. I hope you find this feature helpful and that it makes browsing the content a bit easier. The page also displays, at the bottom, all the monthly letters available to all subscribers, regardless of their subscription plan, in chronological order.

Before I go, one more thing (as it always seems to be the case with my e-mails). It has now been a year since I launched the paid option for my newsletter. While I had previously engaged in paid travel writing and photography work for magazines, websites, and tourism offices, this was the first time I had a direct payment relationship with the content’s ultimate audience, and I’m tremendously grateful to all of you who subscribed to a paid plan, especially in this first year, for giving me the courage to continue. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Until next time,

Burcu

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We are in the last stretch of the fall-colors season in Japan, which seems to have reached its peak in Tokyo a little earlier this year due to colder-than-usual temperatures. This past weekend brought two days of clear skies and sunshine, arriving right on time for the peak, giving Tokyo the chance to shine for the scenic beauty it offers, despite its somewhat underrated position in that department. And it certainly shone beautifully; even Kyoto might feel a little jealous.

The peak of the fall colors usually arrives in Japan’s two most visited cities, Tokyo and Kyoto, at around the same time each year, creating a very hedonistic first-world dilemma: having to choose one if your travels are limited to weekends. In the past few years, I’ve always chosen Kyoto (One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto), tempted by the allure of being a tourist once again on a quick weekend getaway to one of the most walkable cities in the world, whose compact size allows you to cover countless foliage spots on foot in a single day. But this year, due to work and a few unexpected life events, the choice wasn’t mine to make, and I ended up spending all my autumn weekends in Tokyo, including the peak-colors weekend we just had.

This gave me the opportunity to play tourist in Tokyo for one weekend and put together a walking itinerary similar to the one I always follow in Kyoto, aiming to cover as many fall-colors viewing spots as possible in a single day. Given Tokyo’s giant size, the experience was certainly different from Kyoto, where you would have to try hard not to bump into a temple with glowing fall colors at every turn, as the city as a whole acts like an open-air museum. Yet it was still a satisfying one, thanks to the many gorgeous gardens within “reasonable” (in Tokyo terms) distance of each other, which made a fairly coherent, albeit a little rushed, one-day walking itinerary possible.

So this month’s extra post for paid subscribers is a diary-style, one-day piece, One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo, sharing a fall-colors itinerary that, provided you start early and keep a brisk walking pace between the major stops, can be done entirely on foot. That said, if you aren’t short on time (or aren’t trying to justify a post titled One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo), splitting it over two days would undoubtedly be the more sane and enjoyable option.

We will start at 9 a.m. (when most of the gardens open their doors) in one of the city's northern wards and slowly make our way towards the town's central parts.1 There is room for one quick lunch break, but you may have to order your coffee to go.

9 a.m. - Kyu-Furukawa Gardens

Our first stop of the day is Kyu-Furukawa Gardens, located in Kita Ward of Tokyo, offering something quite different from the other spots on the day’s itinerary.

Built in 1917, the estate features a Western-style mansion and a hilltop garden designed by British architect Josiah Conder. From there, you overlook a Japanese-style stroll garden completed in 1919, the work of Ogawa Jihei VII, responsible for many gardens in Kyoto, including the East Gardens of Heian Shrine. While there are plenty of Western-style mansions and gardens in the country, and, of course, many Japanese ones, the blend of the two in a relatively compact setting is rather rare.

The mansion and the gardens, commissioned by the Furukawa family, who owned one of Japan’s largest industrial conglomerates at the time, survived both the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 and the bombings of World War II. After briefly being used by the Allied Forces following the war, the estate was turned into a public garden in 1956.

Kyu-Furukawa Gardens is the lesser-known one among the “superstar” Tokyo gardens and parks that we will cover in this itinerary. I’m not sure I would go out of my way to visit it on its own, but it made perfect logistical sense as a starting point, and even if it didn’t, it’s still worth finding your way there, now speaking from experience.

Even though I didn’t visit this time due to my self-imposed schedule, the mansion's interior, which now serves as a small museum, can also be visited. But during the autumn colors season, you will, just as I did, likely spend most of your time outside, wandering through the beautiful Japanese garden centered around a mid-size pond, with narrow walking paths, magnificent maple trees, and even a small waterfall, which was pleasantly unexpected.

After spending about forty minutes in the gardens, my next stop, after a 20-minute walk, was Tokyo’s arguably most beautiful garden. It’s a place you may want to visit before noon during the foliage season to avoid the not-insubstantial afternoon crowds, which can give even Kyoto’s temples a run for their money during the season.

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The remainder of this post is available to paid subscribers. Upgrade below for unlimited access to the complete Letters from Japan archive of around 70 posts. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

Also available in the archive are these related autumn trips:

One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto — a full-day fall-colors walking itinerary.

Tōhoku Onsen Hopping — four nights at four distinctive hot springs during the peak autumn-colors season.

Autumn Colors Trip to Aomori — a four-day trip to Aomori in Tohoku during the peak fall colors season.

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We are in the midst of autumn, one of the loveliest times to travel in Japan. Most destinations are putting on their best selves to apologize for their summer behavior - mild weather, colorful trees, and the first hints of the upcoming festive season, with, I suppose, a sense of joy gradually building toward the new year. Normally, this November edition of Letters from Japan would be all about fall color destinations.

But this month, I’m not here to write about Japan, or my home, Oceania, or Southeast Asia, the three regions that sometimes appear in this newsletter as geographical diversions, or about my recent travels.

After two very lengthy monthly letters, Reading Japan in September and Seasons of Japan in October, followed by an extra post, Onsen Hopping Trip to Tohoku, in early November, the tables are fully turned this time, for something shorter, lighter, and a little more interactive (as I’m equally tired of my own voice).

This month, I have something different: a travel poll, the kind I used to post on Instagram at year’s end, back when I was younger (well, not that much younger, ten years ago, when I was 35 and already too old for this kind of thing), mostly for friends. It is not the kind where I ask what you’d like to see more of in this newsletter or whether travel makes you a better person, but rather an excuse to reflect on our travel habits, and on the concept itself, a little lightly, or perhaps even a bit too seriously, in a way that somewhat mocks the whole thing. This is not a serious poll at all, as you’ll see right from the first question, where I offer you a trade to forgo a world-famous landmark.

The poll is open to all subscribers, and entirely anonymous, so no one, including me, will see the individual votes.1 We will all only see the percentages. I initially considered saving this for the year-end December letter and turning it into an annual tradition as it used to be, but I think it will be more fun to share it now, keep it open until the end of the month, and post the results in the December letter, when the newsletter will, I promise, return to its roots and talk about travels in Japan.

Before we start this poll of mostly extremely hypothetical questions, just one photo, in honor of the main theme of this newsletter, from the recent trip to Tohoku - one of the visually most satisfying trips I’ve taken in recent years, which was, despite the heavy storm, truly delightful.

Holiday Offer

Letters from Japan Annual Travel Poll of 2025 (which has nothing to do with Japan)

Below are some truly nonsensical questions, inspired by the games we used to play while traveling with friends in high school and college. The road trip kind of question: Would you spend a night alone in a thousand-year-old cave in Cappadocia, full of ancient and religious carvings, with no electricity and no one around for a kilometer, if we paid you USD 10,000? I’d instantly turn down the money, not because I’m not materialistic, but because I used to be utterly terrified of the dark (just a little less so now) and could not and still cannot imagine anything scarier.

In terms of the more extreme hypothetical scenarios below, the only question I already know my answer to, with 100% certainty, is #3. For the rest, I’ll be deciding and voting along with everyone else until the end of November, and if you would care to know, I’ll be transparent about my own votes, possibly even for question #10.

As always, thank you for being here and for bearing with me through this very strange diversion from our regular programme. I will be back with Japan-focused content in December.

Until then,

Burcu

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This autumn, cloudy and rainy weekends have far outnumbered the sunny ones in Tokyo. It is also noticeably colder than the previous autumns. While I hope late November will bring sunnier days to accompany the peak fall colors, I don`t mind this moody Tokyo weather, especially on this rainy Sunday, which set the perfect atmosphere for a cozy stay at home and finish this post, mentioned in last month’s letter, Seasons of Japan, which covers a recent onsen hopping trip through Tohoku, for monthly and annual subscribers.

During the five-day trip,1 I stayed at four different onsen ryokan located in Aomori and Akita Prefectures. There were also visits to the region’s famous foliage spots, all conveniently scattered between each inn.

This recent Tohoku trip was visually one of the most satisfying trips that I`ve taken in recent years. It offered many moments of soothing beauty - the expected and delightfully clichéd version of autumnal scenery - “elevated” by uniquely Japanese features.

But there were also moments of almost violent beauty, the kind you don’t quite know what to do with, the sort of beauty that makes you worry you’ll never be able to take it all in, a panic-inducing sort of way. A kind of beauty that I consider myself lucky to encounter once every five years, as its impact tends to stay with you for a lifetime, once initial anxiety is replaced with an inspiring sense of awe.

The weather in Tohoku was, as expected, much colder than in Tokyo, and quite action-packed. The meteorological menu commanding the five-day period included a heavy rain that partially flooded the bus stops and shut down stream-side trails, strong winds of the umbrella-stealing kind, and Blair Witch-level spooky but photogenic fog. The sun had also made occasional, very brief appearances. But those appearances felt almost divinely timed, as if someone had suddenly turned up the lights, to brighten up the most deserving scenery at the perfect moment, as if to say, “Here is your moment, don`t bother me for another five years.”

Following the same itinerary, and getting a little closer to sunnier days with each step, we’ll below first start with a tiny onsen facility in the Hakkoda Mountains that has that secret cabin-in-the-woods feel (without the eeriness), move on to a famous, or maybe a little infamous, one known for its vast bath, renowned as much for its milky-blue waters as for its mixed-gender bathing policy. Then we’ll spend a night at an electricity-free onsen that has often appeared in this newsletter, and finish the trip at another small inn converted from a former school in one of my favorite hot spring villages in Japan. Logistics-related details will be provided in the footnotes in relevant sections.2

Day 1 – Oirase Stream + Onsen Stay: Yachi

The first day of the trip, which started with the earliest Shinkansen departing from Tokyo bound for Tohoku, took me first to the Oirase Stream near Towada and then to a 400-year-old Yachi Onsen, tucked away in the dense woods of the Hakkoda Mountains in Aomori Prefecture.3

I had, a few autumns ago, already visited Oirase Stream for a two-day trip, and I would, honestly, not have included it in this trip’s itinerary if it weren’t already on the way to Yachi Onsen. While I do love the concept of repeat travels, as evidenced by the recurring appearances of certain locations in the newsletter, I never felt the urge to return to Oirase Stream for a second visit, for a rather strange reason: it felt too beautiful for its own good.

The stream and the hiking trail that accompany it is for sure an objectively (which may be the keyword here) stunning sight. I attempted to describe the beauty of this famous rocky and narrow stream nestled between dense forests of Aomori, home to approximately 14 different waterfalls, and which flows out to the equally picturesque Lake Towada as follows in one of the previous letters: “I never truly understood what “romantic scenery” actually means, but I suppose Oirase Stream in the fall must be as close as it gets.

Continue reading this post

The remainder of this post is available to paid subscribers. Upgrade below for unlimited access to the complete Letters from Japan archive of around 70 posts. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

Also available in the archive are these related autumn trips:

One Fine Autumn Day in Kyoto — a full-day fall-colors walking itinerary.

One Fine Autumn Day in Tokyo — a walking itinerary for the city’s peak foliage season.

Autumn Colors Trip to Aomori — a four-day trip to Aomori in Tohoku during the peak fall colors season.

Read more

Autumn is in full swing here in Tokyo. We’re already deep into the merino sweater phase of the year, and I suspect that in a week’s time, those thin yet mighty Uniqlo winter coats (the nationwide uniform) will make their first seasonal debut.

As the weeks go by, new versions of those coats will surely appear, announced by Uniqlo with the kind of urgency that will once again make me feel I must buy one to stay alive, or at least to keep my visa intact. Yet they’ll all look so similar to the previous ones that telling them apart would attest not to one’s sense of fashion but rather to an engineering degree. Honestly, with names like BlockTech, HeatTech, Dry-Ex, Airism, and PuffTech, if it weren’t for the adorable colors and visuals, one could easily mistake Uniqlo’s product launches for those of a semiconductor company.

But despite the over-the-top jargon, it’s always encouraging to see Uniqlo’s webpage open with PuffTech, offering ultra-fine hollow synthetic fibers that trap air for lightweight warmth, quick-drying, washable, water-repellent, and anti-static performance for cool conditions, and replacing the Airism line and its comfort-conditioning, moisture-wicking, and miraculous capillary effect (otherwise known as the “if you need to wear this, you’d better stay indoors” technology). This shift, both on the webpage and on the colorful racks of Uniqlo, means summer is officially over, and we’re now as far from it, and all its misery, as we’ll ever be this year.

So, this particular time of the year is possibly the safest time to cover this month’s topic: the seasons of Japan and the eternal question of “when is the best time to visit?”- a question that, if asked during the summer, when in the throes of humidity-induced trauma and unable to imagine that better days would eventually come, would surely be met with a very firm “never.”

But now, with a sweater on, the air conditioner on heating mode, still dark outside at 4:30 a.m., and two cups of coffee in, I could perhaps not only over-romanticize Japan’s touristic allure but even find it in my heart to write one or two kind sentences in favor of Japanese summers.

So here we go: first, a few general remarks, followed by a season-by-season review, and, finally, a brief fake mea culpa section on over-tourism discussions in the context of Japan.

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Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Two of the main drivers of international tourism in Japan are nature-related seasonal events: the fall colors, known as kōyō, and the cherry blossoms, the famous sakura. (So yes, brace yourself - this post will be full of truly shocking, never-before-heard revelations and secret tips like this.)

The sakura is a famously short-lived event, lasting only about a week at its peak, which I suppose is part of its appeal. Kōyō is a bit kinder in that respect, with a window of roughly three weeks in each location, during which the leaves' colors progress from green to yellow/orange and then red before turning brown and finally falling off the trees.

The Japan Meteorological Agency publishes an excellent fall colors forecast map each year, tracking the progress of autumn foliage at more than 700 locations across Japan throughout the season, along with a similar map for cherry blossoms in spring.

But since trips often need to be planned far in advance and the forecasts have a habit of changing (increasingly so in recent years), planning a trip around these natural events for a specific city can be a little anxiety-inducing.

There is, however, and fortunately, another “but” to all of this: if your main goal is to experience the kōyō or sakura and you’re flexible about where to go, Japan’s tall, narrow shape, dominated by mountains and stretching from 46°N in Hokkaido to 24°N in Okinawa, works in your favor, offering a remarkable range of seasonal contrasts, and a generous window of time to catch these seasonal events with a bit of moving around.

Fall colors begin in the peaks of Hokkaido as early as mid-September, then gradually move south through mountain ranges and northern cities, reaching the gardens and temples of Tokyo and Kyoto by late November. They then move to the southern regions such as Kyushu, before making their rather sad exit around mid-December. During this three-month stretch, you can either head higher into the mountains or travel from north to south to catch the colors at their peak.

Similarly, while you can encounter the cherry blossoms as early as mid-January in Okinawa, they won’t grace Hokkaido with their fleeting beauty until May, with Kyoto and Tokyo experiencing Japan’s most beloved natural spectacle from late March to early April. There are also early-blooming varieties, such as kawazu-sakura in the Izu Peninsula, that appear in February. In other words, from mid-January to mid-May, it will not be too hard to find somewhere in Japan to see for yourself whether those pink and white flowers live up to the hype.

So when it comes to kōyō and sakura, it’s a little bit of a “where there’s a will, there’s a way” situation.

This seasonal contrast, and the flexibility it brings, also makes it possible to design a trip that includes the usual suspects like Tokyo, Kyoto, or Kanazawa during their quieter shoulder seasons (mainly October, January, and February), while still leaving room for an awe-inducing, scenery-focused escape to a rural area, whether for kōyō, sakura, or Japan’s ever-spectacular snowy landscapes.

For instance, a late-October visit to Tokyo can be paired with a fall-colors getaway to Tohoku. Likewise, a relatively less expensive February stay in Kyoto can be complemented by a snowy onsen retreat in the easily accessible prefectures of Gifu or Nagano. This way, you can enjoy the main city destinations with fewer crowds while still getting to experience some version of iconic landscape scenery elsewhere.

The same logic tied to seasonal contrasts even applies to Japan’s otherwise dreadful summers: you may combine a hiking trip in Hokkaido (where breathing in summer still feels like a normal human function, unlike on the mainland) with a hot but undeniably beautiful beach stay in Okinawa, and you can skip the mainland altogether while still experiencing two of Japan’s most rewarding landscapes.

After this long introductory section, which the Japan National Tourism Organization would probably approve of, since it reads a little like a cheesy travel brochure titled Enjoy Japan: Anytime, Anywhere, let’s move on and take a closer look at the four seasons Japan is so famously proud of, even though it probably shouldn’t be (because one of those seasons really doesn’t deserve to be listed among the regular human-friendly ones).

Autumn: Who Does Not Love One

Except for Hokkaido, September is still essentially part of the summer season in Japan: beaches in Okinawa remain busy, while cities on the mainland stay grudgingly hostile to humankind.

But come October, the weather cools down substantially. The month, however, still falls under the typhoon season, which starts in May. So, if your plans include island destinations such as Okinawa or Yakushima, it is always good to have a backup plan, as transportation disruptions due to weather are not uncommon.

The impact of typhoons on mainland cities, while not nonexistent, is usually far less severe than on the smaller islands, making October an ideal time for walking-heavy urban adventures. It’s also, from an event-driven tourism perspective, one of the quieter months in Japan. There are no major holidays other than the Sports Day long weekend (on the second Monday of the month), so the hotel rates tend to be a little more reasonable across most destinations.

Early October (except in Hokkaido) is also still a good time for some mountain hiking before the snow takes over, and, with a little bit of traveling, you can even catch the fall colors in all their glory as they make their descent much earlier to some high altitude places like Karasawa1 in Kamikochi, the Tateyama Mountains, or Oku-Nikko2—three magnificent nature spots, each perfect for an overnight trip if you’re departing from Tokyo.

By early November, with the footsteps of autumn growing louder, things start to get a little busier. Around this time, carving out a few days in your itinerary for a Tohoku add-on will almost guarantee some fall color viewing without the need to hike up the mountains, as this is when the leaves reach their peak at easily accessible iconic spots like Oirase Stream in Aomori.

The rest of this post is available to paid Letters from Japan subscribers. Each monthly letter is free to read when published and becomes part of the paid archive when a new monthly letter is published. Paid subscribers receive continuing access to the complete archive of more than 70 posts, including all past monthly letters, additional travel diaries, walking itineraries and other Japan travel resources. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

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It’s a lovely, breezy Sunday morning in Tokyo, though the sky can’t seem to decide between sun and clouds. It’s not quite jacket weather yet, but we’re slowly getting there. Students are already back in school, although September is not the big “back-to-school” moment it is in many other countries. In Japan, the school year starts in April, so September is more like a return after a mid-year break.

Due to some changes in my work circumstances (more like an addition than a change),1 I will this fall be spending more weekends in Tokyo than I did previously, as my new task requires me to be in Tokyo on Saturdays until 11 a.m., at least until the end of January, with a few breaks in between.

Even though I enjoy the weekend trips, especially during the autumn colors season, I’m also looking forward to my obligatory Tokyo weekends (with the added guarantee that I’ll leave the house to get to work) with the hope that I can adopt a more intentional and structured approach to exploring this lovely city that, despite my endless affection for it, I somehow never feel I do enough to get to know more closely.

As the first step toward engaging with one of the world’s largest (and I think gentlest) metropolises a little more intentionally—and in the hope that I can someday craft a more comprehensive, guide-style post about Tokyo that goes beyond a love letter—this month’s extra post for paid subscribers focuses on some of my favorite eateries in the city.2

But, before we get to the list, I should admit a few things first. So that what follows can be read in the right context (and maybe even completely disregarded!).

While I very much like eating (I wish I liked it a little less), I couldn’t be further from a foodie. I can eat almost anything (except cucumbers), even dishes I don’t particularly care for, as long as there’s plain Turkish/Greek yogurt on top. For example, I can eat beans with yogurt, pasta with yogurt, even rice with yogurt (a common Turkish habit that terrifies most people, and particularly Japanese, who have a rather complicated relationship with dairy products). I can also eat the same thing every day (and often do) and would not question it much.3 Maybe I shouldn’t even be allowed to write a post like this—but, well, freedom of speech I guess, as long as it lasts.

So while I enjoy dining out (Tokyo’s eateries are impossibly atmospheric), it’s never the food that drives my choice. It is, instead, the lighting (the warm, no-ceiling kind) that draws me into a restaurant and keeps me coming back (unless, of course, the entire menu revolves around cucumbers - not an entirely outrageous possibility in Tokyo, where concept cafes, shops, and eateries dominate the scene).

With that (big) disclaimer in mind, I’ve listed below some of the places I frequent in Tokyo and feel confident bringing friends to when they visit.

Bistro Aligot in Jimbocho

If I had to pick one favorite among the places in this post, it would be Bistro Aligot, named after the French dish that is its specialty. The two-story restaurant, converted from an old ice shop, sits in Jimbocho—Tokyo’s “book city,” home to hundreds of second-hand bookstores and recently named the world’s coolest neighborhood for 2025 by Time Out contributors. Aligot makes a perfect stop to end a day in Jimbocho, after exploring the old but rarely dusty (this is Japan, after all) bookshops, which often also offer a small but quite interesting selection of English books.

The rest of this post is available to paid Letters from Japan subscribers. Subscriptions are US$5/month or US$50/year, with annual subscriptions also including a one-on-one Japan itinerary discussion. Each monthly letter is free to read when published and becomes part of the paid archive after one month. Paid subscribers receive continuing access to the complete archive of more than 70 posts, including all past monthly letters, additional travel diaries, walking itineraries and other Japan travel resources. You can use the subscription box below to upgrade and continue reading.

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