Japan has an interesting shape – skinny with an elbow. There’s northern Japan, and there’s western Japan. The elbow, of course, is Tokyo, the geographical and cultural fulcrum of the nation.

The reddish line on the map shows my travel path. The circles represent represent the places we visited. The places are, in order from southwest to northeast:

• Itsukushima, aka Miyajima
• Hiroshima
• Himeji
• Osaka
• Nara
• Kyoto
• Tokyo (the big circle)
• Utsunomiya
• Nikko
• Fukushima
• Sendai
• Matsushima
• Morioka

Note that we didn’t visit in that order. Actually, we started in Tokyo and made separate jaunts to the west and to the north. Outside of Tokyo, we spent no more than a day at any single location. Tokyo itself was allotted a full week of exploration time. Traveling with a wonderful pair of native guides – my in-laws – we packed an amazing number of experiences into a two-week span.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting a separate article for each destination, along with articles about particularly fascinating aspects of Japanese culture.