Seasons and gardens
Aya Nakamura
Published work
43 signed pages across 8 collections, biggest section first. Every one carries this byline.
Sights 14
- Kinkaku-jiKyotoThe Golden Pavilion is a twenty-minute one-way walk with one great view in it. Knowing that before you arrive is most of the visit.Read
- Fushimi Inari TaishaKyotoThe gates everyone photographs are a short stretch near the bottom. The shrine that is worth two hours starts where most visitors turn round.Read
- Kiyomizu-deraKyotoOne temple in Kyoto opens at six in the morning. Using that is the single most effective thing you can do about crowds here.Read
- Ginkaku-jiKyotoThe Silver Pavilion has never been silver, and since April 2026 it costs twice as much as the Golden one. What you actually get for the new price.Read
- SanjusangendoKyotoA 120-metre hall holding 1,001 gilded Kannon. Nobody can photograph it, so nobody queues to. The most underrated hour in Kyoto.Read
- Osaka CastleOsakaThe price doubled, the ticket grew a second museum, and the tower is a 1931 concrete reconstruction with a lift. All three facts matter.Read
- Umeda Sky BuildingOsakaOsaka’s best building and its best view, with one pricing trap and one weather rule that between them decide whether the visit works.Read
- Shitenno-jiOsakaFounded 593, rebuilt in concrete, and priced in three pieces. Most of what you want to see here costs nothing at all.Read
- TsutenkakuOsakaOsaka’s sentimental tower changed its price and its entry rules in the same month, and almost nothing published before 2026 reflects either.Read
- Osaka Aquarium KaiyukanOsakaThe most expensive admission in Osaka, sold at a price that changes with the calendar, and the one big sight the Amazing Pass does not cover.Read
- DotonboriOsakaOsaka’s signboard canyon is free and permanently open, which makes the only real question what hour you give it.Read
- Senso-jiTokyoTokyo’s oldest temple costs nothing and opens before anything around it. The gap between the hall opening and the shops opening is the whole trick.Read
- Meiji JinguTokyoA forest of 100,000 planted trees in the middle of Tokyo, free to walk, on a clock that moves with the sun rather than with the working day.Read
- teamLab BorderlessTokyoThe famous one moved across the city in February 2024. Guides still sending people to Odaiba are sending them to an empty site.Read
Districts 7
- GionKyotoKyoto's geisha district closed its private alleys to visitors in 2024. What remains is a public street, a shrine, and a great deal of misunderstanding.Read
- ArashiyamaKyotoEveryone comes for a hundred and fifty metres of fenced bamboo. The two places either side of it are better, quieter and worth the admission.Read
- HigashiyamaKyotoThe eastern hills are where a Kyoto trip really happens. The constraint is not distance, it is that everything up there closes before five.Read
- Namba and DotonboriOsakaThe half of Osaka that people mean when they say Osaka, and the three-street rule that separates eating well from eating under a sign.Read
- ShinsekaiOsakaThe district everyone calls rough and almost nobody finds so, and the place to eat kushikatsu properly rather than decoratively.Read
- NakazakichoOsakaThe only surviving pre-war quarter in central Osaka, ten minutes on foot from the tallest towers in the city.Read
- YanakaTokyoLow wooden houses, around seventy temples, a cemetery full of cherry trees and a shopping street with no chain stores. Almost all of it is free.Read
Events 6
- Gion MatsuriKyotoJapan's most famous festival runs on fixed dates that ignore the calendar. The nights before the processions are the part worth planning around.Read
- Jidai MatsuriKyotoTwelve hundred people in twelve centuries of costume walk across Kyoto at noon. Two hours later a mountain village sets fire to itself.Read
- Tenjin MatsuriOsakaOne of Japan’s three great festivals, on dates that never move, ending with a thousand-year-old procession by boat and by firelight.Read
- Kishiwada Danjiri MatsuriOsakaJapan’s most dangerous festival, in Kishiwada rather than Osaka city, on dates we could not confirm from an official source.Read
- Sanja MatsuriTokyoAsakusa Shrine’s festival, and the loudest three days in Tokyo: a hundred portable shrines, two million people, and no ticket.Read
- Sumida River FireworksTokyoTokyo’s oldest fireworks festival, two launch sites on the river, about twenty thousand shells, and around a million people trying to see them.Read
Museums 5
- Osaka Museum of HistoryOsakaA ¥600 museum standing on the seventh-century palace it explains, with a window that beats most paid observation decks.Read
- The National Museum of Art, OsakaOsakaA national museum buried under Nakanoshima with a ¥430 collection ticket and a Friday evening rate almost nobody uses.Read
- Cupnoodles Museum Osaka IkedaOsakaA free museum in Ikeda where the only thing that goes wrong is the booking, because the two factories do not work the same way.Read
- Tokyo National MuseumTokyoJapan’s oldest and largest museum sells one ticket for six buildings, and most visitors spend it all in the first one.Read
- Nezu MuseumTokyoA Kengo Kuma building in Aoyama with a pre-modern Asian art collection and, behind it, a wooded valley garden that has no business being there.Read
Walks 4
- The Philosopher’s PathKyotoThe best free hour in eastern Kyoto. The direction you walk it in decides whether the temple at the end feels earned or compulsory.Read
- Kiyomizu-dera to GionKyotoThe best-known walk in Kyoto, and a completely different walk depending on whether you start it at six or at ten.Read
- Namba to ShinsekaiOsakaThe one walk that shows you how Osaka is put together: canal, market, temple, tower, and dinner at the end of it.Read
- Yanaka old-town walkTokyoThe best free walk in Tokyo: a cemetery under cherry trees, seventy temples, a shopping street with no chains, and a 1706 shrine.Read
Autumn colour 3
- Kyoto autumn leavesKyoto peaks in the last week of November, not in early November. The 2026 forecast, temple by temple, with what each one charges in the autumn period.Read
- Tokyo autumn foliageThe most common autumn mistake in Tokyo is arriving three weeks early. Here is when the city actually turns, and what to do if your dates are fixed.Read
- How koyo timing worksOne mountain can hold six weeks of autumn. Once you see why, the forecasts stop being a lottery and start being a timetable.Read
Things to do 3
- Tombori River CruiseOsakaFree on the Amazing Pass and the only thing on Dotonbori that is better from the water than the pavement.Read
- Shitennoji flea marketOsakaOne fixed date a month turns a quiet temple into the best market in Kansai, and it costs nothing to walk into.Read
- teamLab PlanetsTokyoThe one you walk through water in. Separate from Borderless, flat-priced rather than dynamic, and on an announced closing date.Read