Japan

Japan Frames

Photographs and plain facts for a first trip to Japan

The first two hours decide how the first two days feel. Paperwork to do before you fly, what to set up in the

The gates stay lit until eleven and the day-trip crowds leave at six. Two hours in between are the best time t

The season is not ten days in Tokyo. It starts in Okinawa in January and ends in Hokkaido in May, and the earl

Japan fires several million shells between July and September, in front of crowds that arrive six hours early.

Striped flower fields in summer, a pond the colour of antifreeze in autumn, and a drive between them that is m

Six metres of snow a year, light enough to blow off a glove, and a landscape that goes down to two colours. Wh

The front starts in Hokkaido in late September and reaches Kyoto at the end of November. Two months of colour,

The shinkansen is the least interesting train in Japan. What the fast line is actually for, when the rail pass

One of the most light-polluted countries in the world also has three certified dark sky places and a southern

Two and a half hours from Tokyo, and the one city that kept its teahouse streets intact. Ropes on the pine tre

Thirty minutes from Ikebukuro is a street of clay-walled merchant warehouses that survived the fires Tokyo did

Two hundred and sixty pine-topped islands in a shallow bay, forty minutes from Sendai, and three red bridges t

The sea really is that colour. What the photographs do not tell you is that you need a car, that the best wate

The colour bands in the water are a map. Where the reef flat ends, where the drop-off starts, which beaches yo

Three thousand cherry trees around a seventeenth-century moat, and a keep that looks better from a distance th

The bay side of the city is twenty years newer than the rest of it and built to be looked at after dark. Four

The window is about ten days and it moves by up to a fortnight from year to year. Where to stand, which hours

Tokyo gets a real snowfall once or twice a winter, and the city is spectacularly unprepared for it. What it lo

634 metres, two decks, and a ticket that doubles if you buy the wrong one. Which deck is worth paying for, whe

A 1914 brick station rebuilt to its original shape, a plaza designed for the view back at it, and the one part

Sixty-eight years old, 333 metres, and still the better photograph of the city's two towers. Where to sho

The gate marks the point where ordinary ground stops. What the shape means, why some are vermilion and some ar

Thirty minutes from Tokyo, and the only skyline in the country that is best seen from the water it was built o