Japan is a year-round destination, stretching 1,900 miles from the snowy north to the tropical south. Of its four main islands, the largest, Honshu, is home to the biggest cities in Japan — Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka and Nagoya — as well as historically and culturally important destinations Kyoto, Nara and Hiroshima. In the north, Hokkaido is the winter playground, while Kyushu is the place for hiking and hot springs. Across the Seto Inland Sea, the island of Shikoku is famous for its untouched way of life, while 1,000 miles south of Tokyo is Okinawa, Japan’s answer to Hawaii.
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Honshu is the island with the big hitters. The great cities of Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, ancient Nara and Hiroshima, are all easily accessible on the Tokaido-Sanyo bullet train line, with the Tokyo and Kyoto stretch best known as the “Golden Route”. Don’t miss the icons of Tokyo: Shibuya’s “Scramble Crossing”, Ginza’s neon, Shinjuku’s backstreet bars and tranquil Meiji Shrine. Board the bullet train westbound to Kyoto, making a detour en route to Hakone, for its hot springs and views of Mount Fuji. In Kyoto, you’ll need good walking shoes to explore the Unesco world heritage shrines and temples, such as Kiyomizu-dera and Kinkaku-ji, rock gardens and geisha districts.
Kyoto is at its most beautiful — and its busiest — during spring, when swathes of cherry blossoms turn the city pink. Attend a spring hanami party under the “weeping” cherry blossoms in Maruyama Park, Kyoto, or go for night-time cherry-blossom viewing at Nijo Castle, a Unesco world heritage site.
Where and when to see Japan’s cherry blossom
Continue west to see the immaculate Unesco world heritage castle in Himeji, then to Okayama, from where you can catch a ferry to the art island Naoshima, as well as other former industrial islands turned art sites in the Seto Inland Sea. In Onomichi, rent a bike and cycle the Shimanami Kaido, a string of bridges traversing the Inland Sea to Shikoku. In Hiroshima, visit the Peace Memorial Park and Museum, before taking the ferry past the A-Bomb Dome to Miyajima island, famous for the red “floating” torii gate that marks the entrance to Itsukushima Shrine, a Unesco world heritage site built on stilts on the Inland Sea.
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Mount Yotei at Niseko on Hokkaido (Getty Images)
2. Hokkaido
Best for winter holidays
For winter holidays, Japan’s northernmost island is unrivalled. Hokkaido is blessed with piles of famously light powder snow, world-class ski resorts and great backcountry trails — not to mention incredible winter seafood, a favourite being king crab, from the nearby Sea of Japan. The island is easily reached by air or by bullet train from Tokyo, via the Seikan tunnel — the world’s deepest and longest railway tunnel. In cosmopolitan and family-friendly Niseko, English is widely spoken and you can ski, board, snowshoe and even cat ski against the dramatic backdrop of Mount Fuji lookalike, Mount Yotei. You’ll want a night or two in Sapporo, Hokkaido’s vibrant capital, which has famously good miso ramen and a week-long Snow Festival every February dominated by huge ice sculptures. On the coast in Shiraoi, the Upopoy museum recognises Japan’s indigenous people, the Ainu. Head east to discover Hokkaido’s vast tracts of wilderness. Don a drysuit to walk on the winter drift ice off the Shiretoko Peninsula, or visit in summer to see brown bears, orcas and sperm whales.
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Buddhist statues with knitted caps and red bibs at Tanemaji temple on Shikoku (Alamy)
3. Shikoku
Best for authenticity
With its hard-to-access interior, gorges and vine footbridges, Shikoku is the smallest and least-visited of Japan’s main islands. If you’re looking for authenticity and solitude, then you’ll love Shikoku, which is rural and untouched — though you’ll need nerves of steel for the for vertiginous, narrow roads in the Iya Valley, nicknamed the Tibet of Japan. Stay in ancient thatched homes in remote villages, and visit some of the 88 Buddhist temples along the 870-mile pilgrimage trail that circles the island. The best season to visit Shikoku is autumn, when the mountainside gingko and maple trees are a patchwork of resplendent yellows and reds.VisitMatsuyama city for a soak in Dogo Onsen, one of Japan’s oldest hot-spring bathhouses.
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Lake Kinrinko at Yufuin, on Kyushu (Alamy)
4. Kyushu
Best for great nature
The most southwesterly of Japan’s main islands, Kyushu is the place to hike active volcanoes and relax in abundant hot springs. Take in the dramatic mountains views from the open-air tubs in the sedate hot-spring town of Yufuin, or head to brash spa resort Beppu for mud and sand baths for a relaxing day trip. In Miyazaki, cross to Aoshima island for unusual rock formations known as the “Devil’s Washboard”, before heading to Mount Sakurajima, a smoking active volcano dominating the Kagoshima skyline. From here you can catch a hydrofoil to Yakushima, a small but remarkable island designated a Unesco world heritage site for its ancient cedar forests.
Highlights on the island include the mossy gorge of Shiratani Unsuikyo, a day hike to the a 7,000-year-old cedar known as the Jomon Sugi, and the hot spring revealed at low tide on the beach in Hirauchi. Take a ferry from Kumamoto City to the Shimabara Peninsula to hike the Unzen geopark around Japan’s youngest peak, Mount Heisei Shinzan. Not far away is the city of Nagasaki, with its dramatic history, sea views and perfect sunsets.
Nagasaki’s islands include Dejima, a small artificial island built to house 17th-century Dutch traders; Hashima, an eerie, abandoned offshore mining site that inspired Silva’s island in the James Bond film Skyfall; and the Goto islands, whose Christian heritage sites are a Unesco world heritage site.
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The Yaeyama Islands, one of three island groups in Okinawa Prefecture (Getty Images)
5. Okinawa
Best for sun-seekers
You can swap your top for kariyushi — the Japanese version of a Hawaiian shirt — in Okinawa: all you’ll need is your swimsuit. Three hours by air from Tokyo, the 160 tropical islands of Okinawa have year-round sunshine, sand beaches and coral reefs. Once part of the Kingdom of Ryukyu, the Okinawa islands have a unique culture distinct from the mainland. The archipelago’s largest island — also called Okinawa — has numerous Ryukyu heritage sites, including castle ruins and a royal tomb, although its most important, Shuri Castle in Naha, was devastated by fire in late 2019 and is largely closed. Okinawa is the home of karate and you can try your hand at the Karate Kaikan, or sample the Asian-influenced local cuisine in Mashiki market. The Peace Memorial Park commemorates those lost in the Battle of Okinawa.
A day-trip by ferry from Naha, Tokashiki, in the Kerama islands, is great for swimming and snorkelling; but for the best island hopping, fly south to the Miyako Islands, or the Yaeyama Islands. The latter includes the time-warp Taketomi island, with its buffalo carts for public transport; Iriomote, for its rare endemic flora and fauna; and Yonaguni, Japan’s westernmost island, renowned for its manta rays and hammerhead sharks. Also underwater is the mysterious Yonaguni Monument, a series of submerged stone structures off Yonaguni’s south coast, known as Japan’s Atlantis.
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Kabira Bay on Ishigaki (Getty Images)
6. Ishigaki
Best for beaches
This is island living at its most beautiful: vivid green hills merge into shards of white beach and slivers of electric-blue bay, and the air is silent save for the odd blast of music from a passing vehicle — hire a car and you could easily spend a week here. Ishigaki’s dozen or so beaches rival those of the Caribbean, but every now and then you come across a reminder of where you really are: a dusty road where lion-dog statues guard camellia-covered houses; birdsong announcing a green signal at a pedestrian crossing; a hole-in-the-wall joint serving up pigs’ ears and snails.
Must-sees include Kabira Bay, where a speckling of uninhabited islands rise from a translucent sea — and where flurries of highlighter-coloured fish and manta rays gaze up at you from beneath the floor of glass-bottomed boats. Come evening, prop up the bar at one of the little town-centre shacks. The local favourite, Negril (behind a blue door, down a lane just above the island’s main crossroads as you walk away from the ferry port), serves up live music along with the Ishigaki take on hot dogs (with butter and cabbage). For a more raucous taste of the island’s culture, head to Usagi-Ya (1F Nakamura Heights) for pigs’ ears and tofu paste, live Okinawan music, and an all-singing, all-clapping audience. Just beware of the local awamori rice wine. If you visit dramatic, boulder-strewn Uganzaki North Beach, which you’re likely to have to yourself, even if you visit in July and August.
Woodland on Iriomote (Alamy)
7. Iriomote
Best for tropical stays
Opt for something a little less pristine and combine Ishigaki with an overnight stay on overgrown Iriomote, a remote island strewn with waterfalls and tangled rainforest that’s a ferry ride away. Here, dense jungle suddenly gives way to sand and you’ll find the most magical beach of all. Grab a handful of sand on Hoshizuna’s boulder-speckled stretch and you’ll get a surprise: each grain is shaped like a tiny star (and is actually the skeleton of a minuscule organism).
Three Squares Vertical Diagonal by George Rickey on Naoshima (Alamy)
8. Naoshima
Best for culture
Naoshima lies in the silvery Seto Inland Sea, three hours south of Kyoto, via trains and a ferry. It’s pretty (peach-coloured beaches nudge crumbly rocky outcrops), peaceful (the population is just 3,000) — and the last place you’d look for modern art and epic architecture. But here they both are. In abundance.
Tucked into the pines and pebbly shores of this sleepy 15 sq km island are three monumental galleries (Chichu, Lee Ufan and Benesse House — all designed by Tadao Ando, Japan’s superstar architect), sculptures dotted all over the shop, and a village-turned canvas (the Art House Project). Don’t give a hoot about art? It doesn’t matter. At Chichu, the violet-hued James Turrell light installation makes you feel like Mike Teavee in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — small and wide-eyed and full of E numbers. At Benesse House, you’ll want to dive into the bright-blue painting of a swimming pool by David Hockney.
The Art House Project is an old fishing village transformed into a living work of art. Seven traditional wooden houses and a shrine were each handed over to an artist to do with what they liked. The result? Inside one, it’s pitch black except for a wide pool of water with numbers flashing beneath; another houses fresh camellias that turn out to be wooden carvings.
The “floating” torii gate in the Seto Inland Sea at Miyajima (Getty images)
9. Miyajima
Best for relaxation
Slow down with an overnight trip to Miyajima island, where you can see one of the country’s most famous images — the “floating” torii gate in the Seto Inland Sea. Just 15 minutes from the mainland near Hiroshima, it draws hordes of Japanese tourists, especially in the autumn when the car-free island is blanketed in sunset-hued maple leaves. Even at its busiest, Miyajima feels sleepy, with little to do apart from relax, snap pictures of the gates, nudge scavenging deer away from your hot sweet potatoes, and meander towards the cable car up Mount Misen. Once there, it’s little more than a half-mile stroll to a tiny temple that houses a 1,200-year-old flame.
Cherry blossom at Mount Myogi in Gunma on Honshu (Alamy)
When’s the best time of year to visit the Japanese islands?
The islands of Japan stretch from the eastern tip of Russia to the subtropical shores of the east China sea, making for some interesting variations in weather. Northern Hokkaido is usually cool or snowy, while the southern part is usually hot and steamy. But the main islands are in the temperate zone, which has the four seasons, and the best times to visit are spring (March to May) and autumn (September to November) when it’s sunny and warm and the parks and mountains are awash with cherry blossoms or dramatic autumn leaf colour.
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