Japan
Futuristic and immensely ancient, omnipresent and remote, Japan is one of the few world destinations that can evoke a trip to another planet. Its culture, perfectly autonomous yet eager for outside influences, processes global impulses through the filter of a millenary tradition, producing extraordinary results.
With a population of over thirty million, Tokyo is the world’s largest urban area, one so stimulating it merits a separate stay. It’s up to you if you want to get lost in the dizzyingly modern Shinjuku and Akihabara, the impalpable silence of the gardens of Harajuku and Ueno, or the dazzling colours of the crowds that bring Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Roppongi to life. Yet the Japanese urban experience is also one of countless nuances, such as the timeless architectural elegance of the temples in Kyoto and the vitality of Osaka, with its landscape of water, glass, and steel.
The spectacular scenarios of the Philosopher’s Walk in Kyoto and Mount Haku-San are just a few of the endless frescoes of formal perfection with which Japan has captured our imagination. Here, lush nature becomes sophisticated thanks to the work of human hands, and the change of seasons takes on rare grace. Even beach lovers will be surprised by what Japan has to offer: Okinawa, a place filled with spirituality, has some of Asia’s longest and most untouched shores.
Refinement, an impeccable sense of beauty, art, and traditions crossing the centuries, and state-of-the-art technology that has produced one of the planet’s highest standards of living: everything in Japan seems designed to delight the senses. Like the culture of onsen, the hot springs found throughout this volcanically active country. But Japan also has one of the world’s most famous cuisines, infinitely richer than the fame it rightly enjoys in the West: only here can it be explored in all its most secret details.