My Top 100 Places in Japan

“Endless Discovery”.
That’s the slogan of Japan’s tourism campaign. And I’ll be darned if it’s not an excellent slogan, possibly even more so than the creator ever intended it to be.

Because if there is just one word that I can use to describe Japan, it is deep. This slender archipelago of the Far East houses an incredibly dense mosaic of urban and mountainous, ancient and cutting-edge, calm and raucous, not just in the macro but in the micro. Every major tourist spot resides within an ecosystem of lesser-known points of interest. Every neighbourhood holds little quirks and treasures that not even long-term residents have seen.

And yet, it goes even deeper than that. They say that a man never steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. Think that the discovery ends after a decade-plus of life in Japan? Far from it. It truly is endless. Places reveal new layers upon new visits, either from your own discovery or from the changes you have been through as a person, and life being as it is, even the most mundane places can come to cradle precious memories that make it stand up to even the greatest wonders in one’s eyes.

I am far from done with Japan, and will almost certainly release an updated version of this book in the future. But after 10 years of life here, now is a good time to look back at my Top 100 Places in Japan. All of those places that I have journeyed to, of course, but also the incidental ones: places that no tourist has a need to even know exists, let alone visit, but have carved their way into my life and shaped who I am today, for various reasons. This list, then, is more than simply places, but capsules of experiences, moments in time matter to me. I’m excited to share these places and their story with you!