Ongoing conflict and airspace restrictions means summer travel, for many people, is shifting east. Japan is absorbing a surge of serious travel interest from Indian travellers, and this year, it has a lot to offer in return. A cluster of significant new openings across 2025 and 2026–cultural, culinary, architectural–means the country is not just a reliable choice but a genuinely exciting one right now. What follows is a curated look at the experiences that are new, that are open, and that are worth building a trip around.
Board the Hokusai Special Train to Mt. Fuji
Mt. Fuji and Train
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As of March this year, JR Central and JTB have created one of the more considered ways to approach Mt. Fuji. The Hokusai Special Train runs exclusively for foreign visitors, a three-car service decorated with Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the celebrated 19th-century woodblock print series that remains the most recognised artistic depiction of the mountain, connecting Mishima Station (the closest Shinkansen stop to the mountain) to Fujinomiya over a 45-minute journey that slows deliberately at the spots Hokusai himself painted. It forms the spine of a full-day package: Shinkansen from Tokyo, the train, then onward by bus to the World Heritage Centre, Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha shrine, and the Shiraito and Otodome waterfalls. Guides narrate in English throughout. At ¥24,000 (Around Rs14,000) per person including transportation, lunch, and all activities, it reframes a mountain that has become defined by crowds as something closer to what it always deserved to be, which is a subject of wonder. Trains run on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
Forage, ferment, and feast across ten days in Hokkaido
This year, Takigahara Farm is running a 10-day residential programme in rural Hokkaido built entirely around the idea of making a meal from a place. Over ten days, a small group of 16 gathers in a beautifully restored farmhouse at the foot of Kurakake-yama to build a meal entirely from their surroundings. Foraging edible plants, fermenting seasoning, making noodles from seaweed, carving bamboo chopsticks, learning the practice of seasonal cooking, each day adds a layer to a shared feast that becomes dinner on the final night. The people you learn from are the people who live there, like Ako, an artist and poultry farmer; Miwa-san, an ama diver; Nari-san, a bamboo artisan; Ariya, a Buddhist priestess; and Anna, forager and fermenter. Meals across the ten days are prepared from the land and sea by Hokkaido chef Takuto and hunter Maya, whose work traces the full journey from landscape to plate. You also hike the local mountain, take part in tea ceremonies and Japanese lessons, and make journals from washi paper foraged and folded by hand, with pages for recipes, drawings, maps, fragments of conversation. There is a natural wine bar, a sauna and forest bath, and pockets of wilderness to wander and swim. This experience runs from August 21-30, and there are 16 slots only; we suggest booking well in advance through their website.
AloJapan.com