Himeji

It rises like a white heron about to take flight. Himeji Castle has stood through four centuries of war, earthquake, fire-bombing and neglect, its timber keep never destroyed and never rebuilt — one of only a handful of original castles left in Japan, and the finest of them. When the cherry trees around the moat bloom, the contrast of white plaster walls and pale pink is so clean it barely looks real.

Himeji Castle is both a National Treasure and on UNESCO's World Heritage list — the complete early-seventeenth-century castle ensemble: a five-storey main keep and three smaller towers linked by covered corridors, inside concentric rings of walls, gates and moats. Where most Japanese castles are concrete reconstructions, Himeji's interiors are bare wooden floors and steep timber stairs, kept standing by centuries of careful repair. The defences are still legible as you climb — narrow loopholes for muskets, chutes for dropping stones, and a deliberately confusing maze of paths designed to disorient attackers, which works on visitors too. Kōko-en, beside the castle, is a compound of walled gardens in the Edo style, with a tea garden for the pause afterwards. Himeji eats its oden with ginger soy — a local habit so fixed it is a registered trademark — and anago conger eel from the shallow sandy coast is the lunch the town is proudest of.