From the seventeen-metre snow walls of the Tateyama Yuki-no-Otani to the rime trees of Zao and the drift ice of Shiretoko, a working ranking of where snow does something specific in Japan.
Most foreign visitors I meet in Japan dismiss ichigo-gari on sight. They see the cartoon strawberry on the farm sign, hear the words “all-you-can-eat” attached to a winter morning at a greenhouse in the suburbs, and write it off as something for primary-school field trips. They skip it. And they’re wrong. Strawberry picking is one … Read more
Turning up at Shirakawa-go on a light-up evening without a reservation has been impossible since 2019. Most of the photo-tour packages selling “Shirakawa-go winter light-up” experiences for around ¥40,000 to ¥60,000 a head are quietly priced at four to five times the room rate they include, because the operators hold the lottery-allocated minshuku rooms that … Read more
