Our favourite places in Malaysia

On an island in Hiroshima Bay, just a few minutes’ ferry ride from the city, you can cross the threshold between the mortal world and the land of the gods.

What do you think of when you think of Hiroshima? Delicious, noodle-based layered pancakes? Retro streetcars trundling through the streets? World Heritage shrines and friendly deer?

Tokyo has size and Kyoto has history — but as anyone will tell you, Osaka has the kind of cool most cucumbers can only dream of.

Come to Koya for age-old mountain temples in mist-wreathed forest; stay to feel close to something deep and old and mysterious.

Whoosh into Kyoto’s futuristic central station on the bullet train and you’ll be greeted by karaoke bars and concrete, not Zen gardens and mysterious shrines. But don’t let that fool you.

With so many temples and shrines squirrelled away in its mountains and valleys, it should come as no surprise that hiking in Japan is almost inseparable from pilgrimage.

It’s best-known for its picture-perfect preserved town centre and elaborate spring-and-autumn festivals, but if you ask us, Takayama’s real treasures are found in the surrounding alpine countryside.

Sitting on a plateau ringed by snow-capped mountains and watched over by the famous “Black Crow” castle, Matsumoto is the gateway to some of the country’s most spectacular scenery.

Picture Japan as it was hundreds of years ago: small villages of wooden buildings surrounded by mountains cloaked forest and shrouded in mist; streets filled with little more than foot traffic and the voices of shopkeepers selling their wares. Welcome to the Kiso Valley.

Kanazawa is what we like to call the Goldilocks city: “just right” in every possible way.

About 1,500 metres above sea level, surrounded by snow-capped mountains twice as high, Kamikochi lives up to its name — which means “the land of the gods”.

It’s impossible to sum up Tokyo in a line, a paragraph, or even a book.