Japan for Sunset & Golden-Hour Travelers

About this book

Most guidebooks photograph Japan at noon. This one travels in its last light. Two hundred journeys, each one a day composed backwards from its sunset: the town read by its west side, the riverbank walked into the glare, the hill climbed for the extra minutes the heights keep, the ferry deck ridden through amber water, the early dinner eaten facing the sun, the festival eve reached while the stalls are still rising, and the evening, late in the year, when the traveller stands on a familiar shore and watches the light do the thing it only does in that week.

The unit of the book is the journey itself — not the place, not the sunset spot, not the sky phenomenon. A shore matters because of the westward road that earns its evening; a station because of the valley it faces as the light goes; a table because of the window it is set beside. Eight parts: setting out into the evening country · west-facing town days lived at last-light pace · river, lake and harbour light journeys · hill, pass and rooftop ascents · the westbound road of trains, ferries and last-light stations · golden table journeys · festival-eve and town-evening journeys · and the sunset calendar and the turn, closing with the two hundred and first journey — the reader's own street, on its first golden evening, at home.

Because opening hours, fares, event dates and the day's actual sunset time 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 (railway, bus and ferry companies, ropeway and observatory operators, shrine, temple and garden offices, market and port authorities, prefectural tourism associations, the meteorological agency) whose information settles what is current before you travel. Seasonal patterns are described as patterns, which are permanent; the day's arrangements are always referred to official information. Written and created in Japan.