Japan’s inaka — the countryside, literally “the place with rice fields” — is one of the country’s most honest and least mediated travel experiences. Away from the concentrated tourist infrastructure of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, rural Japan offers encounters with the country as it actually lives: the elderly farmer who stops to talk in a
Japan rewards the traveler who ventures beyond Tokyo and Osaka. The country’s most atmospheric ryokan are in mountain valleys in Nagano. Its most moving cultural landscapes are in rural Tohoku’s preserved samurai towns and Shikoku’s ancient pilgrimage routes. Some of its finest food is in fishing villages along Kyushu’s western coast and Hokkaido’s agricultural heartland.