Scenic ROUTE
Journeying into Japan’s regional areas makes it even easier to appreciate the breathtaking beauty during any season.
Atypical Japan traveller narrative goes something like this along the “Golden Route”: Tokyo, Hakone, Mount Fuji, Kyoto, Osaka and perhaps Hiroshima, if there’s enough time. Of course, for anyone partial to a little white powder, there’s a whole snow scene in Japan to be explored.
Beyond Tokyo and the Golden Route, a wealth of regional areas offers ways to experience the beauty and luxury of Japan, staying at luxury ryokan and small hotels outside the main cities.
Since the new bullet train service from Tokyo to Kanazawa was launched in 2015, the pretty castle town has found new favour. In just two and a half hours, Tokyo is a world away and classical Edo-period Japan comes into play in this UNESCO City of Crafts and Folk Art.
Amid tracts of tall timbers, moss-covered rocks and a dedicated blossom path, one of Japan’s three most famous gardens, Kenroku-en garden, is a living haiku. This is everything a Japanese landscape should be. It’s not hard to imagine the changing colours through the seasons; in the heat of summer it still emits colour and shade. Even the sight of three gardeners sweeping silt from one of the garden’s pebble-lined streams using traditional Japanese bamboo brooms is poetry in motion.
Across from the gardens, the restored Kanazawa Castle stands tall on the hill overlooking the town, its huge stone walls topped with white walls and simple peaks. In winter, when the snow sits along its grey rooftop, the beauty is picturesque.
Just a walk from the castle is the Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, a low circular building with glass outer walls and a combination of community areas and public art space. Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich’s fascinating
Swimming Pool is a permanent installation in one of the central courtyards. An optical illusion creates the effect of seeing people immersed in the water when they’re actually just in the room beneath. Kanazawa is home to Japan’s second biggest
geisha area, after Kyoto. In the Higashi Chaya-gai district, a series of carefully preserved teahouses line the narrow streets. In between the teahouses are cafes, galleries and places to buy the area’s traditional gold leaf and lacquerware craft. The geisha houses have a screening of kimusuko (timber lattice) on the ground floor, with timber and glass on the outside of the first-floor entertaining areas.
For art lovers, journey south-west of Osaka to Naoshima, a small, isolated island offering one of the world’s most remarkable art and architecture experiences. Stay at Benesse House, a museum, restaurant and hotel centre in one, the unique concept a collaboration between billionaire art collector Soichiro Fukutake and Pritzker prizewinning architect Tadao Ando.
The 49 luxury rooms are all Western in design, with a Japanese sensibility, and there’s unique artwork in each room, spread across four distinctly different buildings. To savour the one-of-a-kind experience, guests in the museum hotel have special 24-hour access to major works and site-specific installations, bringing new meaning to art after dark.