Tabi Tales — Guide to Traveling Through Japanese Literature

Follow Japanese novels to the real places behind them.

Tabi Tales is a literary travel guide for readers planning a trip to Japan — connecting novels and their authors to the towns, temples, and train lines that inspired them.

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Yukio Mishima

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Stand at the real Kinkaku-ji, burned to the ground in 1950 and rebuilt board by board — the true event Mishima turned into one of postwar Japan's most obsessive novels.

Kansai Kyoto

Yasunari Kawabata

Snow Country

Trace the real hot-spring town behind Kawabata's Nobel Prize-winning novel Snow Country — from the mountain tunnel of its famous opening line to the actual room where he wrote it.

Chubu Niigata

Murasaki Shikibu

The Tale of Genji

Trace the real Kyoto-area places behind The Tale of Genji: the Otsu temple where Murasaki Shikibu began writing it, a real shrine from the story, and Uji.

Kansai Kyoto Shiga

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Spinning Gears

Trace the real Tokyo behind Akutagawa's Spinning Gears: the Imperial Hotel in Hibiya, Ginza's main street, and the Nihonbashi bookstore that inspired it.

Kanto Tokyo