Japan Travel Guide: The Best Food, Sights and Hotels Across the Country

Where do Tokyo’s best chefs eat tonkatsu and sushi on their days off? Where does the expert organizer Marie Kondo buy her pajamas? We asked 24 Japanese cultural luminaries, including architects, fashion designers and artists, to share the places they love most across the country. The only criterion was that each choice be somewhere they personally and enthusiastically recommend. The resulting list of over 100 places — arranged below by island and, within that, by prefecture, in alphabetical order — isn’t a typical or comprehensive guide. But it is, hopefully, full of surprises for even regular visitors to Japan, ones who might not yet have climbed the steep wooden stairs of the Kasamori-Kannon Temple in Chonan, eaten Italian food on the coast of the wild Noto Peninsula or camped on uninhabited subtropical Hamiya Island. — Danielle Demetriou

Explore:

“The water of the Blue Pond, two to three hours from Sapporo by car, is so vividly blue that visiting is like stepping inside an artwork.” — Taiki, model and producer

“The Daisetsuzan National Park in central Hokkaido is called the ‘garden where the gods play’ in Ainu [Indigenous Hokkaido] culture. It has untouched forests, alpine flora and volcanic hot springs. Hokkaido offers a different side of Japan, distinct in terms of both its history and natural landscape.” — Sou Fujimoto, architect

Honshu

Aomori

Eat and Drink:

“One of the best ways to understand the country’s local food culture is at izakayas, or Japanese pubs. At Tsugaru Joppari Isariya Sakaba in Aomori City, diners sit around a C-shaped counter eating smoked daikon pickles, grilled salmon and ikura (salmon roe) over rice, and scallops cooked on the half shell — all paired with local sake. The air is always filled with the strumming of a Tsugaru shamisen, a guitarlike stringed instrument.” — Yukari Sakamoto, chef and author

Explore:

“The Aomori Museum of Art in Aomori City has a wonderful collection of works by Yoshitomo Nara, who was born nearby, as well as ones by Tiger Tateishi and Toru ‘Tohl’ Narita. Nara’s outdoor sculptures are particularly striking in the snow.” — Yuka Takahashi, bookstore owner

“The Shuji Terayama Museum in Misawa captures the unique world of the avant-garde writer and film director Shuji Terayama [1935-83]. But it’s strolling through the forests behind the museum — following scattered excerpts from his poetry, glimpsing Lake Ogawara and the Hakkoda Mountains — that can really…