Ten days in Japan: Tokyo to Hiroshima, all of it by shinkansen

The outer gate of Sensō-ji, with a lantern the size of a car and the gods of thunder and wind on either side. A gate has stood here since 942; the current one dates from 1960. The shopping arcade behind it sells rice crackers and folding fans and has done for centuries.

The lanes west of the temple are lined with grill counters and plastic stools. Point at what the next table is having.

634 metres, finished in 2012, and still the tallest tower of its type in the world. Twenty minutes on foot across the river or one stop on the Tobu line. Book the timed entry before you leave home.

The stalls, sushi counters and knife shops that stayed when the wholesale market and its tuna auctions moved to Toyosu in 2018. Grilled scallops, tamagoyaki on a stick, sea urchin by the tray. Bring cash and an appetite.

A seventeenth century garden built by the shoguns for their own use, now surrounded by office towers. Pay the few hundred yen extra for matcha and a sweet at the tea house on the island in the middle, sitting on tatami with skyscrapers over the pines.

The basements around Tokyo Station serve fast, good, cheap lunch sets to people with fifty minutes. Follow the queue.

Free, entered through the Ōte-mon gate, and you are handed a plastic token to give back on the way out. Climb the tenshudai, the stone platform where the castle keep stood until it burned in 1657 and was never replaced.

A hundred and forty acres of Japanese, English and French gardens with a greenhouse and a Taiwanese pavilion, and one of the best cherry blossom sites in Tokyo. Last admission is half an hour before closing, which catches people out.

Built in 1920 for the Emperor Meiji, who oversaw Japan's industrialisation, and plain by design: unpainted cypress, gravel, and a forest of a hundred thousand donated trees around it. On weekend mornings you have a fair chance of walking into a wedding procession.

The backstreets between Harajuku and Aoyama are full of counters doing one dish properly. Anything with ten locals queuing at half past twelve.

The intersection outside Shibuya station, where several hundred people cross in every direction each time the lights change and nobody collides. Watch a few cycles from a window above it before you walk it yourself. Come back after dark for the version on the postcards.

The oldest and largest museum in Japan. Start in the Honkan and work the upper floor anticlockwise. If time is short, the Gallery of Hōryū-ji Treasures in the quiet annexe holds seventh century gilt bronzes in near darkness and is usually empty.

The market street under the railway between Ueno and Okachimachi, a black market after the war and still cheap and loud. Standing bars, skewers, fruit by the piece.

The pond at the park's south-west corner, thick with lotus from July, with the octagonal Bentendō hall on an island in the middle of it. Twenty minutes round the edge on the way north.

Hand your suitcases to the hotel's takkyūbin counter this evening and they will be in Kyoto tomorrow, for about ¥2,000 each. Tomorrow's train is much better without them.

A little over two hours on a Nozomi from Tokyo Station. Reserve a seat, take the ekiben, and do not be the person eating strong-smelling food in a quiet carriage.

The head shrine of tens of thousands of Inari shrines across Japan, dedicated to the deity of rice and foxes, with thousands of vermilion gates packed into tunnels up the hillside. Each one was paid for by a business and carries the donor's name on the back, which is why the walk down looks nothing like the walk up.

The narrow alley along the Kamo river, lit with lanterns, with balconies out over the water in summer. Places with English menus at the front, places without a few doors in.

Founded in 1164, and behind the doors are 1,001 wooden Kannon figures covered in gold leaf, arranged in thirty-three bays with a row of wind and thunder gods in front. No photography inside, which turns out to be a mercy.

The approach lanes are full of tourist restaurants, and a couple of streets back there are small places doing yudōfu and soba for half the price.

A temple on a wooded slope, its main hall standing on a platform of wooden pillars jointed without nails and hanging out over the ravine. The name means pure water, after the spring below, which people still queue to drink from. Two shopping lanes climb up to it and both are packed at midday.

The park at the bottom of the hill, reached through the Yasaka Shrine gate, and the city's most crowded spot for cherry blossom in April thanks to one enormous weeping cherry. Any other month it is where you sit down before dinner.

Founded in 1334 and burned down so many times that every hall is modern. The pond garden behind them is not: laid out by the Zen master Musō Soseki, it borrows the mountain behind as part of the composition, a trick you will start noticing everywhere afterwards.

Ten minutes of path between walls of green stems twelve metres high, and the sound of it in wind is as good as the sight. Use the walkway south of the railway line rather than paying to cross the temple garden twice.

The mountain villa of Ōkōchi Denjirō, a silent film samurai star who spent three decades building it. A circuit of hill gardens with Kyoto laid out below, and tea and a sweet in the tea house at the end.

Soba and yudōfu are the Arashiyama dishes and the places along the main street do both. Kitchens start closing around two.

About an hour and three quarters on a Nozomi, or add half an hour on a Sakura if you are travelling on a rail pass. Hiroshima Station is a tram ride from the park.

The Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, designed by the Czech architect Jan Letzel and opened in 1915. The bomb detonated almost directly overhead, which drove the force downwards and left the walls standing while everyone inside was killed. It has been stabilised and otherwise left exactly as the blast left it.

A saddle-shaped arch over a stone chest holding the register of everyone known to have died as a result of the bomb, of any nationality, with names still added as survivors die. Stand square in front and the arch frames the flame and the dome in one line.

Two hours at least. The main hall works through the morning of 6 August with the possessions of named people, most of them children; the east wing covers the decision to use the bomb and the campaign against nuclear weapons since. Take the English audio guide.

A UNESCO site, and a complex of red-lacquered halls linked by covered walkways built out over the tidal flat, so that commoners could approach without setting foot on ground the whole island held sacred. Weddings take place here in the middle of the day and visitors are not turned out.

Up the hill behind the village, and quiet because most day trippers never get this far. Prayer wheels run along the staircase and below the main hall is the Henjōkutsu cave, lantern-lit and lined with icons representing all eighty-eight temples of the Shikoku pilgrimage.

Oysters grilled in the shell on the main street, anago-meshi (conger eel over rice) if you want to sit, and a fried momiji manju for about ¥150 afterwards. Eat it fast or a deer will get involved.

The island's mountain, 535 metres, looking out over the Seto Inland Sea and its islands. The ropeway is about ¥2,000 return and closes at 17:00 with the last car down at 17:30; the summit is another half hour on foot from the top station. On foot the whole way is roughly an hour and a half up.

A daimyō garden of four centuries, with carp ponds, tea houses, small stone bridges and a hill you can climb in three minutes, ten minutes on foot from the JR station. Almost empty on a weekday morning.

Three floors and twenty-seven okonomiyaki stalls under one roof, each with its own hotplate counter and each certain you should sit at theirs. Order it with soba noodles, and with an oyster if they are in season. The difference between the floors is smaller than the shouting suggests.

Back east to Tokyo is about four hours; Fukuoka is an hour west if you are carrying on. The airport bus takes 45 to 50 minutes and leaves from outside the station.