The best part of my family's trip to Japan was not Tokyo or Kyoto; it was visiting the smaller town of Hakone and its onsens, ...

Kyoto has a reputation as a place where there’s a second meaning behind people’s choice of words. Often that meaning is meant to subtly nudge the recipient’s behavior in a certain direction, like ...

Accommodations rarely get more atmospheric than this: a 100-plus-year-old Kyoto town house that once housed maiko, or Japan’s apprentice geisha, now renovated to 21st-century standards and trimmed in ...

In a few weeks, the annual Gion Matsuri gets under way, bringing central Kyoto to a standstill. The Shinto shindig, which begins on July 1, dates back to the 9th century, when citizens held ...