Japan for Scent Travelers

About this book

Most guidebooks compete for your eyes. This one is written for the older sense. Two hundred journeys, each one a day composed around fragrance itself: the temple approach met by its incense before its gate, the town that smells of gold for one osmanthus week, the forest gate where the cedar breath arrives green and cold, the harbour announced by salt a full stop before the sea, the storehouse quarter's deep air, the book street's paper dust, the valley exhaling after rain, and the week, deep in the year, when the traveller stands in a familiar grove and meets the first plum air on its own ground.

The unit of the book is the journey itself — not the incense, not the flower, not the fragrant place, not the meal smelled on the way. A temple matters because of the incense its approach gives to the wind; a garden because of the breath its grove lets go at dawn; a market because of the smell that wakes before its stalls. Eight parts: setting out into the fragrant country · temple, shrine and incense-quarter scent days · flower-season scent journeys · forest, mountain and rain scent journeys · sea, river and port scent journeys · town, market and table-scent journeys crossed for their air · wood, paper and interior scent journeys · and the scent calendar and the turn, closing with the two hundred and first journey — the reader's own street, in its fragrant hour, at home.

Because opening hours, closures, fares, event dates and seasonal arrangements 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 (garden, temple and shrine offices, railway, bus and ferry companies, town and prefectural tourism associations, museum and park authorities, the onsen association, the forest office) whose information settles what is current before you travel. It asserts no scent rankings, no strength claims and no health effects. Seasonal patterns are described as patterns, which are permanent; the day's arrangements are always referred to official information. Written and created in Japan.