What to do in Japan?

What we would do here

Not a place to walk into, but something to do: our pick per area.

• A morning sumo practice

  The stables in Tokyo train in the early morning, and some admit visitors in complete silence at the side of the room. It is the one thing in Japan where you see a traditional sport with no stage and no crowd

• A sushi workshop
  Sushi Making Tokyo · 5 stars · 3896 reviews

  What a Tokyo workshop gives you is not the recipe but the hand: how the rice is pressed, how much, and why it looks different when someone has done it for years. Afterwards you eat differently everywhere in Japan

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• A tea ceremony

  Kyoto is where this ceremony took its form, and in its tea houses it is performed as itself rather than as a demonstration. What you take from it is the pace, which is exactly what is hard to find in a city with this many visitors

• A sword smithy
  Masahiro Sword Smith · 4.8 stars · 81 reviews

  A smith working the old way shows how the blade is built from folded layers of steel, and why a Japanese sword is hard at the edge and flexible along the spine. After half an hour here every museum sword display looks different

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• Cooking Osaka's street food

  Osaka calls itself Japan's kitchen, and its dishes are made on a hotplate in front of the diner rather than in a closed kitchen. A workshop here is the other side of a counter you have already eaten at

• An evening of traditional culture

  Osaka is a city of food and street noise, and that is exactly why it is worth stopping for something quiet: wearing a kimono, a tea ceremony or calligraphy, with a guide who explains the rules rather than only demonstrating them

• A sake brewery visit

  Nara is regarded as where refined sake took its form, and the breweries around it are still small and family run. It is what Nara has besides the deer and the temple, and almost nobody stops for it

• A kagura performance

  This danced storytelling is a living tradition of Hiroshima prefecture rather than of Japan as a whole, and village troupes perform it on set evenings. It is the part of Hiroshima that has nothing to do with what happened here

• Cycling the Fuji lakes

  The mountain itself is open to climbers for a short window, but the lakes at its foot are always open and it is fully visible from them. The cycle path around Kawaguchiko is how you see it without climbing it

• A yosegi marquetry workshop

  This coloured wood inlay was developed in Hakone and remains a craft of this area alone. Between the baths and the museums it is the one thing here you leave with something you made

• The Senjogahara marsh trail

  Above the shrines of Nikko lies a high plateau with a boardwalk across open marsh, and almost everyone who comes to Nikko stays below. The walk is the difference between the two halves of this place

• Zazen at a temple

  Kamakura is where Zen arrived in Japan, and its major temples hold sittings open to visitors at set hours. It is why this town exists, rather than the great Buddha