Insight Guides: Japan

Akihiro Shibata/Fotolia.com

One other thing to remember is that, no matter how daunting business etiquette may seem, as a foreigner you are given plenty of leeway – making an effort is more important than getting everything right

The pecking order for sitting is important: wait for others to decide this. The same applies to social situations like dinner.

If we nourish the spirit through proper food and drink, illness will cure itself.”

Few people know that the sumo practice tournament at Tokyo’s Kokugikan arena in the district of Ryogoku, is open to the public.

Ogata in Kochi Prefecture is a good option between April and October, while humpback whales appear off the shores of the Kerama Islands from the middle of January to the end of March.

Compact, organised and introspective: words stereotypically used to describe the Japanese might just as well be applied to their gardens

To see authentic, steep thatch-roofed, A-framed farmhouses (gassho-zukuri), visit the villages of Shirakawa-go. The villages were made a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1995.

Hung along Kyuome Kaido, the main street of Ome, a town west of Tokyo, are many old hand-painted movie signboards called kanban. From Nakahira Ko’s 1956 Crazed Fruit to scenes from chanbara (samurai action films), the street is a boulevard of nostalgia.

To the Japanese people, Godzilla isn’t some huge, lumbering, atomic-born giant lizard. He’s their huge, lumbering, atomic-born giant lizard.