Japan
Take an adventure holiday in JAPAN with World Expeditions, one of the world’s leading travel companies.
A geologically volatile archipelago, 85 per cent of Japan is mountainous. It is a relatively “young” land. The landscape is rugged and rocky, porous with natural springs, and the scenery has been perfectly depicted in famous historic paintings and woodblock prints: tiered mountains, streams, sculpted pine trees and many flowering plants, with a rich variety of bird life. Volcanic eruptions are not uncommon - although not on our route!
The population is concentrated in clustered centres on the coast of the main islands, with the remainder in small towns dispersed through the fertile hinterland. Since the big cities are all in lowland plains, the mountains are left largely to agriculture, forestry and national parks. Buddhism arrived from the mainland about 1,600 years ago, and its many traces overlap with those of the much older native belief system, Shinto. A feudal society for most of its history, Japan has been a parliamentary democracy since World War II, and is on the surface a very modern country. Modern Japanese profess not to be religious, yet the landscape is dense with the traces of a great spiritual legacy, including temples, shrines, tombs and wayside markers.
Japanese people are very conscious of their local roots, and from region to region there is a pleasing variation in dialect, cuisine and even, to a certain extent, appearance. Except for Tokyo, which has drawn immigrants from the northern and central regions, the regions of Japan engender a great deal of local pride.
We offered our first trekking holiday to Japan in 1999 and are one of the most experienced adventure operators in Japan. Our journeys takes you to the very centre of Japanese culture, to the Asia within Japan.
Click on the links to view footage from World Expeditions - Backroads of Japan Adventure Holiday.
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