The Japanese have a fascination with Chinese paintings and stories when they craft their beautiful gardens. They draw inspiration from the swirling mists seen on countless scrolls and translate it to ornamental features such as a special arrangement of rocks that water falls around with eerie precision. Rikgui-en in Komagome (Northern Tokyo) is one such of these. Rather it is deemed one of Tokyo’s finest gardens.

Landscaped around a large lake, the walk talks visitors clockwise around the gardens admiring the various scenes such as ‘dragon in the water’ or a hill known as Fujisode (for it is thought of as a mini-Fuji-san with sweeping views of the entire garden). Meiji-period teahouses were tucked away in parts, the wood warped into such fantastical shapes by time that it appeared almost Dali-esque. Then there was a pond, a small waterfall that had been designed with carefully placed rocks so it looked like three powerful waterfalls tumbling into the pool.

Unsurprisingly, Rikugi-en was a pleasure garden for the Japanese nobility, having been established in 1702 Yoshiyasu Yanagisawa, a feudal lord of the region. This link with history is particularly noted by a series of maps that greet visitors at the entrance with charts of Tokyo’s urban development from 1683 to the present day. I love such maps, I always try to find my home, which is always off the map in a rice field somewhere.

They had a small teahouse in the gardens serving tsumetai matcha and a small sweet azuki-filled cake. It was a delight to sit there on a sunny day, as the combination of sweet cake and bitter tea became as exciting for the mouth as the 88 scenes of literature in the garden were for the eyes.

Tokyo has the most confusing weather right now, so confusing in fact that you cannot find a single weather forecast that agrees wholeheartedly with another. Yahoo Tenki says rain, the BBC rainy showers and weather underground, ‘cloud’. You wake up to discover the true weather is somewhere in between all these, despite the previous day being entirely cloud free. Suddenly a plan to head to the beach on one’s day off starts to look shaky but in an attempt to make the most of the warm weather before Autumn brings back the cold, you go anyway. Tokyo’s weather continued to look moody as I boarded the train at Shinjuku and steamed off in the direction of Yokohama. Moody, until we arrived in Enoshima, a small town on the Kanagawa coastline where brilliant sunshine greeted us. It felt like the popular summer island was forcing the summer feeling on the weather, not that we minded of course.

By this point though, neither of us had brought swimwear – and given a charity party I was attending that evening I did not want to take sand home with me – so we spent a relaxed afternoon exploring Enoshima. The gentle main street of the island was lined with shops filled with the usual tourist tat, of plastic samurai swords and the Hello Kitty of the area that intermingled with small traditional food outlets baking soy-covered dango on barbecues and hawking brightly coloured kakigouri. It rather reminded me of Kyoto and the approach to Kiyomizu-dera.

The shrine at the head of the path stood at the top of some steep stairs with an imposing white gate – one that seemed rather Chinese in its grand immenseness – confronting new visitors to the shrine. To the side was an escalator, to transport the lazy up the hill although for this first stint we climbed it: a hard job in the heat. As we made our way into the island interior the humidity sharply climbed as the foliage around us became denser and more jungle like. Little time was spent at the shrine, we merely followed a good luck path creating an invisible knot around a strange ring made of reed and straw – confusedly as even our combined japanese knowledge could not read the sign – and then onwards to the top.

Around the corner the area opened out with a viewing platform and a stunning vista of the entire Enoshima-Kamakura-Zushi area. We paused briefly to admire it before continuing for an even better view. My friend was unsure of how far it would be to this elusive top and so we paid for the escalator. It turned out that the top was no distance at all. We strolled around this parkland area near the lighthouse for a while, looking for the best place for a good view – we found one that looked out to the Pacific, a vast expanse that glimmered under the hot rays of the sun. It looked so very inviting! I am continually amazed at the power of both ocean and a forested mountain to calm the senses and looking out over tropical vegetation and then the Pacific was a delightful way to spend a day far from the stressful architecture of Tokyo.

Not wanting to leave too soon, we went on a walk along the top, through a small town that sits isolated on the back of the mountain. It was a step back in time as the pathway wound past old wooden facades that hid tatami mat dining rooms and plates of soba with a view. Initially we thought this path was a way down but when we wound up at another temple with seemingly no further path to anywhere we realised our error and retraced every step back eventually heading down past the escalators once more.

Back down by the bridge that links Enoshima with mainland Japan, we mused on the beauty of the island and of the ocean and our luck in finding a sunny day. This was accompanied by some tasty and interesting sofuto kurimu in a mix of vanilla and apple mango flavours. On the horizon though, in the direction of Tokyo a very angry cloud hovered pitch black against the blue of Enoshima. It was time to leave; maybe after all that then the BBC was right.

Golden Week brought a short welcome relief for me as, like many Japanese, I was given the sudden freedom to explore the country a little bit. Together with a friend we headed North, to the dark corners of Iwate prefecture in search of green world far removed from Tokyo. It seemed to be such a dark, wild corner of Japan that every mention of ‘We are going to Iwate-ken’ was greeted with confused looks from friends. ‘Why are you going there?’ they asked. ‘Why aren’t you going to Kyoto?’
I suppose it is natural to be confused why two foreigners may go to such an unusual place, I however was entranced by the untamed North, especially by the stories of a small town called Tono nestled in a valley shrouded in myth and legend. Rob, my friend was simply in the mood for some travelling and so together we went to Tohoku, catching a late bus to Sendai.

Tono is indeed as atmospheric as the books describe and it is easy to see how both Lafcadio Hearn was so mesmerised by the valley. The approach on the rickety ‘wanman’ train wound through mountainous terrain with steep forested slopes on either side, at the foot of which occasionally a house would sit, a surprising interruption to the wilderness feel. Tono itself was a fairly large town although sleepy nonetheless. We were staying in a ryokan owned by an incredibly friendly lady with whom Rob and I felt rather awkward to say goodbye to. Her level of concern was often embarrassingly high. While aspects of the corridors could have been kept better the room itself was a delight from the wooden lattice sliding door for our private genkan to the two large tatami rooms that we could spread ourselves out in. It had that simple understated elegance that Japanese Inns manage so well; maintaining a raw natural feel to the decor while also being quite refined. Meanwhile my body thanked me for once again finding an ofuro.

That first night we ate a traditional meal at our Inn that challenged the tastebuds; the mountain vegetable pickles were fine, as was the tempura that again used seasonal plants and was quite different from the typical Tokyo fare but the horse was a bit of a jolt. The owner brought out two dishes of sashimi; dark red meat lay beautifully presented on top of each other as Rob looked at it quizzically with a face that said ‘this isn’t tuna’. She explained to me with a nervous giggle that it was in fact horse sashimi and out of politeness I ate it. Rob was curious anyway and decided he rather liked his horse. It caused such a stir to our cautious Western ways that the rest of our meal was occupied with a discussion of the strangest things we have ever eaten.

Tono, as I partially mentioned earlier, is a land of myths and stories of demons and ghosts and strange occurrences. These stories have been told amongst the inhabitants since the days of Edo until the early 20th century when an encounter between scholar, Yanagita Kunio and local academic, Kizen Sasaki led to the publication of these folk tales as the Tono Monogatari in 1912.

As we toured the area it was not hard to understand why Tono had this reputation. We rented bikes that allowed us to get close to small unsigned sights dotted around the valley, sites with a definite spooky atmosphere. Our first stop was the site of a former castle. There was little fanfare, merely a plain sign with kanji printed upon it that pointed into the woods. With a little trepidation, Rob and I climbed up the steps deep into the trees. We climbed for a while going deeper into the forest and were finally confronted by a small, dilapidated wooden building. The dingy interior revealed nothing more than some faded strip of material and a rusting tin and we pondered on their purpose. They did not seem so old and we toyed with the idea that it was either a small shrine or a dwelling place. Tono is apparently teeming with mysterious lodges hidden in the woods that house ‘mountain men’. This latter thought started to make my skin crawl as a distinct Blair Witch feeling came over us. We agreed that come twilight it would be one very creepy place to be.

One of Tono’s more famous myths concerns such a hidden house or ‘magoiya’. A farmer’s wife was out hunting for butterbur one day when she came across a grand gate in the deep forest. Upon entering the gate she discovered a garden full of red and white flowers and then further a great house. The house was filled with expensive lacquerware goods that took the poor woman’s breath away. Considering though that this could be the abode of a mountain man she became suddenly afraid and took flight without removing anything from the house. Her good behaviour was rewarded when, as she washed by the river one day, a lacquer rice bowl came floating towards her. She fished it out and her family decided to use the bowl to measure rice. This rice was to never decrease in volume and as thus the family became the richest in the valley.

Meanwhile, Rob and I continued our cycling heading out 15km to the Furusato Mura. While the Furusato Mura bore no more spooky stories it was an interesting insight into the farming life of old Japan. A number of Magariya (L Shaped) farmhouses from the Edo and Meiji periods had been moved to the site for visitors to wander around and experience a small slice of how life felt 200 years ago. Similarly Fukusen-ji, with a grand Kannon Bosatsu was more of the sightseeing and a fun hike up a hill.

Jouken-ji however took us back into this mythological world and introduced us to the kappa. The kappa is a mischevious aquatic creature resembling a the bastard offspring of a frog and a duck with long skinny limbs and a beak. Kind creatures these are not as Japanese folklore tells of their child-eating exploits and habits of stealing horses. Tono has a few ‘kappa pools’ where supposedly these creatures reside, one of these being at Jokenji temple. The kappa here though was helpful and a story tells of it putting out a fire at the temple. Of course, this being Japan, the Kappa has been thoroughly reinvented as a cute mascot or, as a wooden sculpture resembling the gnorcs in Spyro the Dragon.

Although Fukusen-ji and the Furusato mura were indeed interesting places it was still the hidden secret sites dotted around Tono that were the most magical. 500 Buddhas that lay hidden in a forest of moss-covered granite rocks only revealed themselves upon gazing on the rocks for a period and an old wooden torii protecting a simple shrine was overgrown with ivy and creepers that wound sinisterly over the structure. It was truly haunting and a world away from Tokyo although after a week in the styx I did at least feel ready to come back and the brief stop in Morioka for catching our bus felt like coming back to civilization once more. Just a shame that all that excitement gave me the flu, really!