Japan, “The Land of the Rising Sun,” is one of the most intriguing countries. Everything that surrounds you is unexpected: The rigid social etiquette, the relations between spouses, the morale where the notion of “biblical” sin does not exist, the shyness that people have if they doubt that can perform an act to perfection.

But, simultaneously, what fascinates the travelers are the famous Japanese traditions, derived from Rinzai zen, the tea ceremony, ikebana, calligraphy and the ukiyo-e, the floating world, the art of the geishas, the way of the samurai, the exquisite gardens, the quiet pavilions with immaculate ponds, all refined to the smallest details in centuries.

We traveled in Japan aboard the Shinkansen, the bullet train, taking us from Tokyo to Nikko, the burial place of the Tokugawa clan. We continued to Kamakura, the capital of the first shogunate, and Kurashiki, a city untouched by the war bombs. Further, we went to the magnificent gardens of Okayama, to Nagasaki, to Hagi on the shore of the sea of Japan, to the holy island of Miyajima full of temples and deers. We continued to Kyoto and Nara, the famous capitals of Japan for hundreds of years, to the gardens of Kanazawa and deep in the Japanese Alps to the wooden architecture of Takayama. We ended up in Koya San, the sacred place of esoteric Buddhism, and also the burial place of the man who invented the most important of the present four Japanese alphabets, Kobo Daishi.