Japan for Heatwave & High-Summer Travelers

About this book

Every other guidebook apologises for the heat. This one travels in it. Two hundred journeys, each one a day shaped out of the scorching weather itself: the shade road walked at noon pace, the gorge river cold at the day's white centre, the highland ascent that climbs out of the furnace by degrees of shade, the cold counter reached through a shimmering street, the festival town entered in the last of the heat and left in the first of the cool, the shifted day lived at the cool edges — dawn starts, siesta middays, evening journeys — and the morning, late in the season, when the traveller wakes and the air has quietly changed.

The unit of the book is the journey itself — not the place, not the beach, not the weather phenomenon. A river matters because of the hot road that earns its cold water; a highland town because of the ascent that climbs out of the heat to reach it; a festival because of the white afternoon travelled through to stand in its finale. Eight parts: setting out into the scorching country · shade-road town days lived at heat pace · cool water journeys · highland and forest ascents · the shifted day at the cool edges · journeys for the cold table · festival and fireworks heat journeys · and the hottest weeks and the turn, closing with the two hundred and first journey — the reader's own street, on the first hot morning, at home.

Because opening hours, fares, event dates and the day's actual temperature 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 (the meteorological agency's and the ministries' heat-illness alerts, prefectural tourism association, town office, railway, bus and ferry companies, shrine, temple and garden offices, market and inn associations) whose information settles what is current before you travel — and official heat-illness alerts outrank every itinerary in the book. Seasonal patterns are described as patterns, which are permanent; the year's arrangements are always referred to official information. Written and created in Japan.