Mansfield Stephen - Insight Guides: Japan

Introduction: A Singular Place

From Buddhist effigies to virtual pop idols, imperial court dancers to robot pets, bamboo forests, ski slopes and coral reefs to mega-city fashion and architecture: an immense cultural and geographical diversity confronts the visitor to Japan.

Japan is to Asia what France is to Europe: a concentration of some the continents best sights, natural landscapes, cuisine, innovative culture, cutting-edge technologies and futuristic cities attracting the worlds leading architects. The natural curiosity of the Japanese prods them to explore foreign parts, but like the French, they sense that their own country has everything the traveller could possibly desire.

The unifying metaphor of a country defined as one family, one language, one perspective, a land of order, rituals and rules, a xenophobic society of worker ants, conformists and whale slaughterers, a simulacrum of Western culture easily mocked in such oddly old-fashioned films as Lost in Translation , crumbles under closer examination. If its easy to belittle Japans orthodoxies, its equally easy to praise its originality and non-conformism, the pliability that allows it periodically to reinvent itself.

The dual stereotypes of Japan as the Teahouse of the August Moon , a place of mystique and graceful manners, an exotic costume drama, or as a people characterised as early, super-advanced adopters of technology living in confined apartments, suffering the indignities of crowded subways and working conditions, have their origins in the popular imagination and the way the West, in particular, would like to think of Japan. Although there are elements of truth in these preconceptions, a more accurate clich is Japan as the land of contrast, a notion few that have lived or visited the country would contest.

With roughly 6,800 islands, there is bound to be a lot of diversity. It is, quite literally, possible to experience Japans superb powder snow on the ski slopes of Hokkaido one day, and to be testing the transparent blue seas of Okinawas southernmost Yaeyama Islands the next, such is the geographical and climatic range.

Japans vibrant cultural scene draws from the traditional arts and crafts as much as contemporary manga, anime artists, J-Pop icons and meta-pop fiction. The fussy aesthetics of the tea ceremony and flower arranging, the years of formal training required to perform noh , kabuki and bunraku , the rituals and ceremonies that punctuate its cultural calendar, contrast with its laid-back bars, live music houses and vibrant youth culture and street life.

Creating an itinerary can be challenging. Will you include castles, temples and millennia-old shrines, secluded heritage villages, pottery towns, old foreign settlements that are now cosmopolitan ports, exquisite crafts, traditional festivals, cutting-edge architecture, major art collections, hiking trails and rural hot-spring resorts, the cultural treasure houses of Kyoto and Nara, or focus on one of the worlds largest concentrations of formal gardens?

Japan has rightly been called the storehouse of the world, a place where you can shop til you drop. Its reputation for world-class food and beverages precede it. In the spirit of trying to please every pocket, dishes can be sampled anywhere from stand-up soba eateries favoured by truck drivers and time-driven salaried workers, to the refinements of kaiseki ryori , Japans haute cuisine.

Asian but apart from Asia, Japan may appear thoroughly to have embraced Western culture, but closer examination reveals that it has done so in a re-codified form. The glass-and-titanium panels of the multi-storey building you are gazing at may appear to be familiar, but step inside and, alongside the Starbucks and Mister Donut outlets, you are just as likely to spot a shiatsu clinic, rustic charcoal-grill restaurant or maid caf.

The worlds best intra-city transportation system is served not only by the bullet train, but an increasingly competitive and affordable airline network, inexpensive long-distance buses and a far-reaching ferry service, connecting visitors to Japans intriguing small islands and their micro-cultures. Japan has never been cheap, but there has been considerable cost-cutting in recent years, reflected in more affordable deals on almost everything, from bargain-basement restaurant lunches to accommodation.