Tokyo

Tokyo is not one city but a few hundred villages that grew into each other. Each has its shrine, its bathhouse, its shop that has sold only rice crackers since 1912.

We skip the scramble and go small: a morning in Yanaka among the temple walls and sleeping cats, an hour with a knife sharpener, a counter of eight seats where the chef hands you each piece himself.

Arrive slowly. Two or three nights is enough to adjust your body clock and your sense of scale before the countryside.