Japan: Winter festivals of Sounkyo
and Yokote

Few sights in this world can physically
take the breath away; Sounkyo's Ice
Cascade Festival is one of them.

Japan: Asahikawa Festival of Snow, Ice and Illumination

...an elaborate 10ft-high crystalline carving, apparently cut from a giant block of emerald, shining with a ghostly luminescence in the frigid evening air.

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Japan: Miyajima island
and Yokote

Just off the coast lies an island so sacred that no one is allowed to give birth or die here.

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Japan: Gardens of Tokyo

...any sense of a bygone age is shattered by volleys of screams from the vast rollercoaster that loops incongruously over Tokyo’s oldest garden.

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Japan: Koya, Japan's holiest mountain

With a mist of incense curling towards us and the sun's first rays warming the paper screens behind, the rhythmic chanting of monks assumed a lulling, hypnotic quality.

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Japan: Reading the tea leaves in Uji

I was about to violate a thousand points of Japanese etiquette.

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Japan: The Izu Peninsula

I reckoned I had a matter of minutes before either getting out or passing out.

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Cyprus: Border changes

...a symptom of Turkey's desire to join the EU, or a cynical ploy to legitimise the breakaway northern state?

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Cambodia: National wildlife parks

...we tank through luminous rice fields, every glance out of the window returning a snapshot of the poverty and vitality of rural life.

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Philippines: Hill tribes of the Cordilleras

I spend a troubled night listening to a dozen stray dogs howling at the fatefully full moon.

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Japan: The Izu islands

Any visions of a sunny sojourn dissolve in the driving rain that chases us into the tiny arrivals hall.

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Philippines: Batanes

The Philippines’ last frontier

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Burma: The Golden Triangle

elephants ...we adjust our watches by half an hour, switch to driving on the right and cross the narrow river for a head-spinning afternoon in Tachilek town.

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Japan: Gadgets for the 25th century

I learn that I comprise 2.37kg of bone, 40.25kg of water, too much fat and not enough muscle.

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Thailand: Anantara Elephant Camp

I’m soon aglow with a sense of natural harmony only partly explained by their curious herbal whisky.

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Japan: Izu Islands

...we’re surrounded by dizzying swirls of other-worldly creatures with names as exotic as their colourings: sunset wrasses, oriental butterfly fish, maya-mayas, Moorish idols, unicorn grenadiers.

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