Japan is one of the most rewarding countries in the world to travel. It is modern and ancient simultaneously: bullet trains run on the second, while Buddhist monks chant in thousand-year-old temples. Streets are spotlessly clean and almost completely safe. The food is extraordinary. And despite the language barrier, Japan is surprisingly easy to get around.
The country is an archipelago of nearly 7,000 islands stretching roughly 3,000 km from north to south. Four main islands account for almost all of the population and most of the sights: Honshu (the largest, where Tokyo and Kyoto sit), Hokkaido in the north, Kyushu in the southwest, and Shikoku to the south of Honshu. The subtropical Ryukyu Islands — including Okinawa — extend far to the southwest, closer to Taiwan than to Tokyo.
Tokyo is the obvious starting point — an enormous, endlessly layered city that takes weeks to understand and years to exhaust. But the classic route for first-timers is the Tokaido corridor: Tokyo, then Hakone or Nikko, then west by Shinkansen to Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka. It barely scratches the surface, but it's a good scratch.
The deeper Japan — Tohoku's mountain shrines and traditional villages, Shikoku's pilgrimage circuit, Hokkaido's vast national parks, the ancient stones of the Kumano mountains — requires more time and more effort, but is well worth both.
A note on cost: Japan is not as expensive as its reputation suggests, especially in 2025 with the yen at historically weak levels against most Western currencies. Budget travel is genuinely feasible; the main costs are accommodation and intercity transport.
