Tokyo to Osaka via the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, 9 Nights

Met at Narita or Haneda and taken to the hotel for a mid-afternoon check-in. Keep the evening simple and nearby: an IC travel card from the station, dinner at a small counter restaurant, and an early night. The mountain days later in the week start early, so arriving rested is worth more than a late first night out.

Tokyo's east side. Senso-ji, founded in the seventh century, is reached through the Kaminarimon gate and down Nakamise, a lane of snack and souvenir stalls. Across the Sumida river the Tokyo Skytree has its main deck at 350 metres, the best way to grasp the size of the city. The afternoon is teamLab, a sequence of dark rooms filled with moving, projected light, which works as well for adults as for children.

Check out and head west to the Fuji Five Lakes. Lake Kawaguchi gives the classic reflected view of Fuji when the air is clear, and Oshino Hakkai is a village of eight spring-fed pools filled by snowmelt that has filtered through the mountain for decades. Afterwards the road turns north through the Yatsugatake highlands to Nagano, the 1998 Winter Olympic city, arriving in the evening. Early risers can join the dawn service at Zenko-ji next morning.

The day the trip is built around. From Ogizawa an electric bus tunnels to Kurobe Dam, 186 metres high, where you walk across the crest above the gorge. A cable car, a ropeway with no intermediate towers and a trolley bus climb to Murodo at about 2,450 metres, where in spring the road runs between walls of snow. A highland bus and the Tateyama cable car bring you down the far side. Your main luggage goes ahead by road, so carry an overnight bag and warm layers.

South into the mountains to Shirakawa-go, a valley village of gassho-zukuri farmhouses, whose thatched roofs are steep as praying hands to shed heavy snow and whose upper floors once raised silkworms. Climb to the Shiroyama viewpoint for the view down over the roofs, then walk through the village. The drive continues to Nagoya. In illumination season, roughly autumn to late spring, the evening can go to the light displays of Nabana no Sato.

The Toyota Automobile Museum in Nagakute, east of Nagoya, holds more than a century of cars from around the world, not only Toyota's, arranged as a history of motoring. Then west on the expressway to Osaka. In the evening, ride up to the Floating Garden, the open-air deck bridging the two towers of the Umeda Sky Building, for the city lights, and eat in the basement lanes beneath.

West by Shinkansen to Hiroshima. The Peace Memorial Museum and the park around it, with the Atomic Bomb Dome on the riverbank, need a quiet unhurried morning. Then a short train and ferry to Miyajima, a sacred island where deer wander the lanes and Itsukushima Shrine's great torii stands in the sea when the tide is in. Back to Osaka by the evening train.

Fushimi Inari at the start of the day, when the paths beneath its thousands of torii are still quiet. Then a tea ceremony in a tatami room, where the host prepares matcha with set, careful movements and you learn how to receive and drink it. Kinkaku-ji, the gold-leaf pavilion over its pond, follows, and the afternoon ends in Arashiyama's bamboo grove. Return to Osaka in the evening.

A photo stop at Osaka Castle, the reconstructed keep on vast original stone walls, then Nara, capital of Japan in the eighth century. Todai-ji houses a bronze Buddha about fifteen metres tall in one of the largest wooden halls on earth, and the deer of Nara Park, protected as sacred messengers, follow anyone holding crackers. The last evening is in Shinsaibashi and Dotonbori for shopping and street food.

Breakfast and check-out, then the drive to Kansai International, timed from your flight. There is little to add on the last morning; if there is time, the covered arcades near the hotel are good for last gifts, and the airport shops sell most of the same sweets as the city.