Japan for Rainy-Day Travelers & Monsoon Explorers

About this book

Every other guidebook apologises for rain. This one travels in it. Two hundred journeys, each one a day or a few days shaped out of wet weather: the train running beside grey rivers, the town street washed to a shine, the moss garden at its greenest hour, the ferry crossing in soft rain, the ropeway climbing into cloud, the market breakfast eaten while the awnings drip, and the morning after the storm, when the whole country looks newly made.

The unit of the book is the journey itself — not the place, not the umbrella, not the weather phenomenon. A garden matters because of the wet walk that reaches it; a harbour because of the working morning spent in its rain; a festival because of the soaked street travelled to stand in it. Eight parts: setting out into rain · wet-street town days lived at rain pace · travelling the plum-rain weeks of tsuyu · rain garden and temple journeys · river, lake and coast rain journeys · mountain rain and fog · journeys for the rain table · and the storm edge and the clearing, closing with the two hundred and first journey — the reader's own street, in the rain, at home.

Because opening hours, fares, event dates and the week's actual rainfall change, the book never asserts them as current fact: every one of the 200 entries closes with its own official check — the named official source (prefectural tourism association, town office, railway company, garden or temple office, ferry company, meteorological agency) whose information settles what is current before you travel. Seasonal patterns are described as patterns, which are permanent; the year's arrangements are always referred to official information. Written and created in Japan.