Japan seen from afar and Japan experienced in the flesh are poles apart. I grew up in a sleepy English village, and before I first came to Japan more than a decade ago all I knew of the country were images of geisha and sumo, packed commuter trains, cool video arcades and city streets drenched in neon–the things that occupy the narrow gaze of many a travel magazine and documentary.

      Japan, of course, does have all the above. Many of them make up my earliest memories of living in Tokyo. The first time I had to take a morning rush-hour train, I remember feeling as if I were binding on for a 300-person scrum, elbows flying and the tops of other commuters’ heads occasionally cracking me under the jaw, a downside to having become relatively tall overnight. A few days later, my first experience of Shinjuku was like being thrown into a Philip K. Dick novel: flashing lights, buildings blocking out the sky, sirens, shoulder bumps from the crowds and blasts of noise and air-conditioning from every shop front I passed. It was fantastic.

      But it didn’t take long to discover that the stereotyped guidebook images were anything but typical of Japan. The Japanese don’t spend half their time bowing deeply and munching on sushi. Girls very rarely aspire to be geisha, nor boys sumo wrestlers. Walk into any good izakaya (pub-cum-restaurant) and the staid, reserved image often painted of the Japanese will be shattered forever (try Kamiya Bar in Asakusa and you’ll see what I mean). Head out to the countryside and things become slow, laid back and anything but high-tech. Here, it’s the changing of the seasons that still dictates the flow of life for many.

      Over the last decade or so, I’ve been fortunate to have traveled to almost every prefecture of the country, from the wilds of Hokkaido in the far north to the sun-kissed Okinawan islands way down south. I’m also fortunate to be able to earn a living by writing about the many facets of Japan, be that in books related to travel and culture or features on business and sustainability. But even now, Japan regularly finds new ways of surprising and re-energizing me. Sometimes it is something as simple as stumbling upon an old neighborhood for the first time on a walk around Tokyo or finding an exquisite temple garden in Kyoto. Sometimes it is just a fleeting conversation with a stranger. On occasions it’s the familiar things that leave me smiling: nursery school kids getting wheeled around in giant laundry trolleys or the way any conversation with someone aged over 80 seems to begin with them telling me their age and proclaiming how active they still are.

      I hope this book will help you find your own unforgettable Japan experiences. Happy travels.

      Rob Goss

      Japan at a Glance

       Geography

      Situated in Eastern Asia, east of the Korean Peninsula and between the Sea of Japan and the North Pacific Ocean, the Japanese archipelago totals 364,485 square kilometers (140,728 square miles) of land spread over 6,852 islands. The four major islands are Hokkaido in the north; the centrally situated main island of Honshu, which is home to Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nagoya; Kyushu off the western end of Honshu; and Shikoku to the south of central Honshu.

       Climate

      With the Japanese archipelago stretching more than 3,000 km (1,864 miles) from southern tip to far north, the weather can range from subtropical in Okinawa to near Siberian in winter in central and northern Hokkaido. Between those extremes the climate remains similar: Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu are hot and humid in summer with temperatures typically above 30 degrees Celsius; mostly warm, sunny and dry in autumn and spring (except for a short pre-summer rainy season and post-summer typhoon season); and in winter mostly dry but with temperatures dropping only into single digits away from the mountains.

      Thatched buildings at Oshino with Mount Fuji in the background

       People

      At last count, in 2017, Japan’s population was 126 million, of which around 35 million live in the Greater Tokyo area comprised of Tokyo and the neighboring prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama. Approximately 98.5% of the population is Japanese; the rest is made up primarily of Korean (5%) and Chinese (4%). The Japanese are the longest-living people in the world with an average life expectancy of 84.19 years (80.85 for men and 87.71 for women), yet the population is declining as the country also claims the world’s second lowest birthrate.

      Shinkyo-bashi in Nikko

       Language

      The official language of Japan is Japanese. Besides Japanese, Okinawa has its own related but minor Ryukyuan languages, while the indigenous Ainu people of Hokkaido have the unrelated Ainu language. Japanese is the first language of 99% of the Japanese population, and with three separate writing systems (kanji, hiragana and katakana) that between them use thousands of different characters, not to mention a complex system of honorifics, it isn’t the easiest language to quickly get to grips with. Not that you need to worry. In the main cities and tourist areas, you will be able to get by in English. Head out into the countryside, however, and you won’t want to forget your phrasebook. To help make the language barriers a little less daunting, a survival guide to Japanese is included on pages 122–4, which covers useful expressions and pronunciation.

       Religion

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