The place do Tokyo’s greatest cooks eat tonkatsu and sushi on their days off? The place does the professional organizer Marie Kondo purchase her pajamas? We requested 24 Japanese cultural luminaries, together with architects, vogue designers and artists, to share the locations they love most throughout the nation. The one criterion was that every alternative be someplace they personally and enthusiastically suggest. The ensuing listing of over 100 locations — organized beneath by island and, inside that, by prefecture, in alphabetical order — isn’t a typical or complete information. However it’s, hopefully, stuffed with surprises for even common guests to Japan, ones who won’t but have climbed the steep wood stairs of the Kasamori-Kannon Temple in Chonan, eaten Italian meals on the coast of the wild Noto Peninsula or camped on uninhabited subtropical Hamiya Island. — Danielle Demetriou
Discover:
“The water of the Blue Pond, two to a few hours from Sapporo by automotive, is so vividly blue that visiting is like stepping inside an art work.” — Taiki, mannequin and producer
