Japan for Stargazers & Sky Travelers

About this book

Japan keeps some of the finest night skies on earth — and keeps them the way it keeps its hot springs: in specific places, by specific customs. This guide gives the stargazer and sky traveller 200 complete journeys — not observatories, not the night in general, but the star-viewing journeys themselves: the Milky Way over Shiretoko's bear coast and Chichijima's ocean dark, caldera lakes that double the sky, the town that named itself for beautiful stars, the island whose dark is protected for its turtles and its stars alike, the Southern Cross standing off Japan's southernmost shore, the Perseids given a plateau and the Geminids a frozen field, and a full final handbook of forecasts, moons, eyes, light discipline and the second visit. Every entry is built as a working method: the sky target itself, exactly how the journey is constructed around staying for it, its season and moon with its cloudy-night fallback, and the manners owed to the dark and to the people who live in it. Facility hours and event dates change, so none are asserted as fixed facts; every entry names the official source for its own ground — while the durable part, where the dark is and how to travel for it, is guaranteed in full.