Asia and the Orient

10 Books on Japan | A Guide for Senior Travellers

Visiting Japan, a land of dazzling contradictions, is an unforgettable experience. High-tech cities harbour relics of a fascinating past. Futuristic fashion and gadgets share the streets with evidence of deeply held traditions. A soaring sky scraper may house a chamber for ancient tea ceremonies (sado), with tatami mats and sliding wooden doors. Japan is a country famed for its quirky vending machines, where you can purchase soup and even beer! But Japan also has a rich and proud history of architecture, culture and the arts. Literature, in particular, continues to flourish, with this nation responsible for the haiku poem. This Guide to Japan for mature travellers will assist you in planning your visit. It provides key information on what makes Japan so memorable, plus some insider tips for mature travellers, either couples or those enjoying solo travel.

The word Japan conjures for most the image of bright lights and concrete jungles, but the cities abound in natural wonders. Once you step outside the urban centres, expect stunning, geographically diverse landscapes. Japan offers some of the world’s best skiing, and the blooming cherry blossoms draw people from across the world. Japan is also home to 15 cultural and four UNESCO world heritage listed sites, including exquisite temples and sacred sites. Always surprising and incredibly diverse – from its cities to the mountains and semi-tropical beaches, Japan offers travellers unique experiences.

Japan: The Story of a Nation

A Geek in Japan: Discovering the Land of Manga, Anime, Zen, and the Tea Ceremony

The Tale of Genji

by Murasaki Shikibu

Written in the eleventh century, this exquisite portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan is widely celebrated as the world’s first novel. But The Tale of Genji is no mere artifact. It is, rather, a lively and astonishingly nuanced portrait of a refined society where every dalliance is an act of political consequence. A play of characters whose inner lives are as rich and changeable as those imagined by Proust. Chief of these is “the shining Genji,” the son of the emperor and a man whose passionate impulses create great turmoil in his world and very nearly destroy him. His tempestuous nature, family circumstances, love affairs, alliances, and shifting political fortunes form the core of this magnificent epic.

Memoirs of a Geisha

by Arthur Golden

This brilliant debut novel tells the true confessions of one of Japan’s most celebrated geisha.

Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929. Nitta a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha. A story of dance and music; wearing the kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men’s solicitude and the money that goes with it. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount. Where a girl’s virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder. Where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men Where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction—at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful—and completely unforgettable.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

by Haruki Murakami

Japan’s most highly regarded novelist vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel. A story that is a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an ageing war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.

Contemporary Japan | Small Group Tour

This small group tour organised by Odyssey Traveller, Contemporary Japan, will take you through modern life in this East Asian jewel. This contemporary tour is an expedition through Japan’s major urban areas, beginning and ending in Japan’s tantalising capital, Tokyo. For the first 12 days we get our fill of Tokyo fashion, technology, culture, and sights.

21 days

Asia

Departing Oct

Small-group travel, thoughtfully paced

10 Books on Japan | A Guide for Senior Travellers

Lost Japan

An Introduction to Japanese Society

A Concise History of Japan (Cambridge Concise Histories)

For Fukui's Sake: Two years in rural Japan

Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival

Japan: The Story of a Nation

A Geek in Japan: Discovering the Land of Manga, Anime, Zen, and the Tea Ceremony

The Tale of Genji

Memoirs of a Geisha

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Contemporary Japan | Small Group Tour

Japan History by Rail – Small Group Tour

Japan Odyssey – Small Group Tours for Mature Travellers

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