Japan's National Parks

About this book

Japan is usually sold as cities and temples. Its other country — the protected one — is bigger, older and stranger.

Japan's National Parks covers 200 places in one walker's format: where the place is and what kind of ground it is, the one highlight it does like no other, how the walk actually works and how you reach it (in honest outline — never a fake opening calendar), and the season and the caution that will decide your day. Shiretoko's bear-country lakes and Kushiro's crane marsh. Oirase's gorge and Bandai's coloured ponds. Nikko, Oze, Kamikochi and the Tateyama plateau. Fuji's lakes and Hakone's crater. Miyajima's summit, Aso's living crater, Yakushima's thousand-year cedars. The mangroves of Amami and Iriomote, the Kerama blue, and the guided shore of Ogasawara — plus the quasi-national parks the cities actually use every weekend, labelled honestly as what they are.

It is honest where other books go vague: opening periods, trail closures and crater regulations change, so instead of printing a calendar that will rot, the practical chapters teach you how to read and confirm every park's current status, how the two-tier park system works, and how to build the spare half-day that turns a closed trail from a disaster into a different, better walk.

Walk the protected country. It has been waiting ninety years.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.