How to get around Japan without upsetting the locals

“If you see a step up, it’s time to change your shoes,” said Llew Thomas, our tour leader, as we entered the guesthouse. Wooden geta sandals were lined up in a row but slipping into them was no easy feat. It required balance and dexterity to remove our boots and step up without touching the mud-flecked entrance floor again. Wearing the right footwear in the right place is huge in Japan; there are even special plastic sliders for the lavatory.

Most tourists avoid the shoe thing by staying in international-style business hotels, but anyone curious about Japan should enter the world of the ryokan. At these traditional inns, often family-run, you sleep on the floor on a futon (or three), soak in a public bathhouse, and eat a 12-course supper of largely unidentifiable seasonal delicacies. Horse sashimi anyone?

On a first visit, it helps to have a guide to decode Japanese etiquette and much else that will confound a Westerner. Which was how I found myself, an inveterate independent traveller, joining a guided walk across the Kunisaki peninsula, a beautiful rural corner on the island of Kyushu.

There were five of us waiting for Llew at Fukuoka station: all keen walkers, all 50-plus, and all eager for cultural immersion. Literally. Our first night was spent in Yakabei, famed for its thermal hot springs. Llew ran us through the onsen bathhouse rules and kit. Or rather no kit as nudity is de rigueur. He laughed when he saw the panic on our faces. “Don’t worry; they’re single-sex these days.”

Provided with a tiny wash towel, we were to lather up, scrub and rinse every inch of our bodies while crouched on a toy stool. Only then should we enter the bath itself. Tonight’s was one of Kyushu’s finest: a cascade of mist-shrouded rock pools set in a bonsai garden beneath the stars. It was a blissful way to soak away the aches of a day on the trail.

The Japanese do love a uniform. After bathing guests are encouraged to dress in identical long wide-sleeved yukata gowns, a neat solution to the problem of what to wear to dinner. “Make sure you wrap it around you left over right,” said Llew. “Right over left is for the dead.”

Ryokan are renowned for providing seasonal local delicacies and each artfully arranged dish had us reaching for our phones. Pickled and tempura vegetables, raw fish and tofu in its many forms always featured as did wagyu beef and river fish, which we cooked ourselves on personal hotplates.

In homage to the love and care that Japanese farmers devote to growing rice, it is served at the end of the meal and should be eaten on its own. “Adding soy sauce or miso broth is an insult,” Llew warned us, “though, if you must, you can add some pickles.” I didn’t feel the need; Japanese rice is a revelation. Who knew white rice could taste this good?

Llew, a Brit who came to Japan to teach English in the 1990s, now runs Walk Japan, occasionally escaping the office to guide this tour of the deeply spiritual Kunisaki peninsula.

Buddhist monks arrived here from China in the sixth century and found their philosophy of enlightenment complemented the pragmatic Shinto animistic beliefs of the local rice farmers. These early ascetics saw the petrified lava flows radiating from the peninsula’s volcanic core as a mandala of their most sacred text, the Lotus Sutra. They built temples and shrines in auspicious locations deep in the forests, connected by pathways that wound through the rugged volcanic terrain.

It was a stiff climb that first day up stone-cut steps lined with moss-covered statues of Buddhist deities (originally there were 69,380, one for each character of the Sutra’s text). Shinto shrines stood alongside Buddhist temples and a fallen tree shaped like a dragon was said to harbour a powerful spirit.

Three white-robed women appeared ahead of us, strands of sedge woven through their hair, the mark of pilgrims. I lagged behind to watch as they read a prayer on the steps of the wooden shrine before dancing around a sacred gingko tree and disappearing back into the forest like ethereal beings.

Our destination was the 12th-century Fuki-ji temple, a designated national treasure and one of the country’s most beautiful wooden buildings. The temple’s guesthouse had very comfortable straw-matted rooms and, as dawn broke, we padded out in our slippers to join the young priest in praying for the health of the nation before taking part in a short meditation.

Sitting beneath the smoke-blackened beams of the temple’s main hall facing the original statue of Amitabha, Buddha of compassion and wisdom, I could feel the allure of its spiritual embrace.

But there’s a pragmatism to religious practice in Japan today. Our priest swapped his robes for jeans and T-shirt to make soba noodles for our supper and drive us to the start of our next walk. His family has taken care of Fuki-ji for 35 generations, almost since it was built. His mother was pushing him to marry, he said, but it was hard to find a wife to live in such a remote place.

It was encounters like these that made our tour so insightful. On another occasion we visited a community café that served a lunchtime buffet of salads and soups to whomever dropped by. Housed in a log cabin among the rice fields, the cook had spent five years in Alabama and was eloquent on the social burdens of returning home to a community where so many elders needed help.

A series of stunning ridge-top walks between valleys filled with ripe golden rice brought us finally to Ota village where another Brit, Paul Christie, the chief executive of Walk Japan, has lived for 20 years farming rice, restoring old houses, and keeping the community alive by training local people to help run his travel company.

He took us to visit Mrs Wakisaka whose family has grown shiitake mushrooms in the woods here for generations. Portraits of her ancestors lined the walls of her historic farmhouse, set above the family’s ornate Shinto shrine. She was delighted to see us. She had missed serving tea and sweetmeats to foreigners, she said; they made her life more interesting. For us it was a fascinating glimpse into a timeless way of life, one that is fast disappearing as the young leave for the city. We left loaded down with satsumas, the first of her autumn harvest.

Etiquette training completed, Llew waved us off on trains that would take us to the start of solo adventures. I headed for Nara, Japan’s eighth-century capital, which is smaller, less visited and more atmospheric than Kyoto. Narrow lanes of traditional shop-houses led to peaceful temples with their original statuary and to sake distilleries, bonsai gardens and magnificent parkland filled with deer so tame you can feed them oatcakes by hand.

Sights are easy to navigate on your own; exploring Japan’s food and drink culture is more pleasurable with others. An internet search led me to Japan Tour Adventure run by Remi, a charming Frenchman with fluent English who organises walking and cycling tours of Nara. His four-hour food and drink tour started with a sake tasting before trying kakinoha, preserved fish sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves, slurping a bowl of Nara’s best ramen noodles, and relaxing in a fashionable craft beer brewery where he patiently answered our questions about Japan’s food culture and much else.

By the time I reached Tokyo I felt like an old travel hand aided, it must be acknowledged, by the wonders of the smartphone which gives instant access to mapping, translation, guidebooks and transport timetables. But even the best apps are no substitute for learning from experience, through immersing yourself in a culture, and quizzing a human guide who can help unlock the mysteries of the Japanese way.

Essentials

Walk Japan (walkjapan.com) pioneered cultural walking tours for groups of up to 12. Its 10-day guided Kunisaki Trek costs £2,500 including all meals. Easier walks for first-timers include sections of the historic Nakasendo Way used by nobles and merchants to travel from Kyoto to Tokyo. “Basho: Narrow Road to the North”, led by Basho expert John McBride, is a good choice for amblers.

Japan Tour Adventure (japantouradventure.com) is one of many small companies running guided excursions for independent travellers. Get your guide (getyourguide.co.uk) and Tripadvisor are good starting points for finding them.

10 top tips for first timers

Get a local SIM card 

Sakura sells an unlimited data SIM for £44 for 15 days or £60 for 30 days. Book online in advance of travel and collect on arrival at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.

Take the train

Superfast 300kph (186mph) Shinkansen trains are the best way to travel between cities. Departures are frequent and there’s no need to book ahead, announcements are made in English (even on local trains), and they are always on time. For a frustrated user of Great Western Railways, this was the stuff of dreams.

Even the Japanese use Google Maps to find train times. Put your destination station into the app’s search facility and tap “directions”. Add your departure point for a list of train departures, often including the platform.

Cash is still king

Japan has yet to fully embrace foreign credit cards and contactless payment technology, especially at smaller establishments. Banks rarely have ATMs; instead they’re found in the ubiquitous 7-Eleven and Lawson convenience stores (press “international cards” to start the process). Post offices also offer foreign exchange services.

Get an IC card

These useful prepaid, rechargeable cash cards sold at larger railway stations can be used to pay fares on public transport countrywide as well as in vending machines, convenience stores and some restaurants.

Download Google Translate

Translations of Asian scripts have improved markedly over the past few years. Tap on the camera symbol to help decipher restaurant menus, or tap “conservation” to ask someone a question.

Use luggage forwarding

Superfast trains have very little space for suitcases so locals prefer to use a takuhaibin (luggage forwarding) service. They’re utterly reliable and can be accessed through hotels, post offices and most convenience stores (look out for the yellow Yamato Transport logo of a cat carrying a kitten in its mouth).

And if you buy something bulky on your travels, the shop will happily use the service to forward it to your final hotel for around £10.

Making hotel reservations

My go-to is booking.com. It has the widest choice of establishments at all price points, both hotels and ryokan, and reservations link to map locations for taxi drivers. Airbnb is good for stays in private homes and smaller traditional inns and hostels.

The shoe thing

As you will be removing your shoes many times a day, bring slip-on footwear; the Japanese improvise by wearing trainers two sizes too big. They also wear socks with sandals (showing bare feet is rare) so keep a pair handy to wear with house shoes as a courtesy to others.

Eat it all up

It’s considered rude not to finish all the food on your plate and that includes every grain of rice. On the other hand it’s considered polite to slurp up your noodles to show your appreciation.

There’s no tipping

Japan is one of the few countries in the world where tipping is not expected. And don’t worry about being ripped off by taxi drivers. Invariably they wear a smart uniform and white gloves, will open the door with a bow, and always put the meter on as they set off.