TRIP PLANNER - JAPAN

There’s a reason Japan’s a constant on readers’ wish lists. Here are five itineraries to dig deep into the country’s imagination-firing traditions, culture and scenery...

- ROB GOSS

About halfway up the 2,446 stone steps to the shrine atop Mount Haguro, I was closing in on peak grumpiness. It was bad enough, I remember chuntering to myself, that I was essentially hiking in fancy dress; even worse that passers-by kept taking photos of me.

I was in Haguro to experience life as a yamabushi, the ascetic hermits that for in excess of 1,000 years have used the Dewa Sanzan mountains in Japan’s Tohoku region as the focal point of Shugendo, a religion that blends Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, and pre-Buddhist mountain worship. I was dressed all in white – in a happi coat, split-legged trousers and tabi shoes – and I was being led by a veteran yamabushi, my sensei for a couple of days.

Our hike was all about disconnecting and being mindful of the now. But for at least 1,000 of those stone steps I was anything but mentally unburdened, just painfully self-conscious, preoccupied by deadlines waiting for me back in Tokyo, and uncomfortable in the lingering late-summer heat.

Then something happened. My sensei brought us to a halt so we could silently take in our surroundings and, after a few deep breaths the inner dialogue had gone, replaced by a sharpened sense of the woods; the rustling of leaves and chirping of a bird; the cooling sensation of a light breeze on the clothing stuck to my back. I’d been tricked into the now.

Later that day, we’d be meditating under a chilly waterfall in flimsy loincloths, then jumping over fires as part of a ritual of rebirth—the classic yamabushi experiences. But standing in the calm of the woods on Mount Haguro will rattle around my memory long after the embarrassment and thigh ache faded. Pure peace.