We meet in the evening at Otopeni airport and fly to Istanbul, from where we depart after midnight for Tokyo. The crossing of Asia is done at night; we land the next day in the evening, at Haneda airport, the one closest to the city.

We land at 7:50 PM, Japan time — seven hours ahead of Romania. Transfer to the hotel in Shinjuku, the district with the busiest train station in the world: three and a half million people a day.

Whoever still has energy can go for a walk on the streets of Omoide Yokocho, with dozens of small restaurants with eight seats each, each with its own grill.

We start early in the morning at Senso-ji, the oldest temple in the city, before it gets crowded: the four-meter red lantern at Kaminarimon gate, Nakamise market street, and the five-story pagoda.

Then we pass through the forest of one hundred thousand trees surrounding the Meiji Shrine — planted in the middle of the city a hundred years ago — and emerge directly into Harajuku, on Takeshita, the street of teenage fashion. At Shibuya we cross the famous intersection along with three thousand other people and watch it from above, from the Shibuya Sky terrace, at sunset.

In the evening, Shinjuku: the neon lights of Kabukicho and the free panoramic view from the 45th floor of the City Hall.

Full day in the mountains, two hours north of Tokyo. Nikko is the burial place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the shogun who unified Japan, and his shrine, Toshogu, is the most richly decorated building in the country: five thousand carvings, the Yomeimon gate covered in gold leaf, and the three wise monkeys, which are from here.

We then climb the Irohazaka winding roads — forty-eight turns, one for each letter of the old alphabet — to Kegon Waterfall, which drops ninety-seven meters at once, and Lake Chuzenji. In November, the whole valley is red and gold.

We descend southwest, into Hakone National Park. We cross Lake Ashi by boat, with Mount Fuji rising in the background — if the sky is clear, and in November it usually is — and ascend by cable car over Owakudani, the volcanic valley where sulfur emerges from the ground and where eggs boiled in the springs turn black.

In the evening, we settle into a ryokan, the traditional inn: rooms with tatami, yukata instead of clothes, open-air thermal baths among maple trees, and a kaiseki dinner — ten to twelve small courses, brought one by one, each arranged like a painting. It's the night everyone remembers.

In the morning, the first ride with Shinkansen: two hours and ten minutes to Kyoto, at three hundred kilometers per hour, with Fuji on the right window. Large luggage goes separately, with the hotel-to-hotel courier service — we only travel with a backpack.

In the afternoon, Fushimi Inari: ten thousand red torii gates, placed one next to the other on a forested hill, forming tunnels that climb four kilometers. We go as far as each wants — the first two kilometers are the most spectacular.

In the evening, Gion, the geisha district: wooden houses, paper lanterns, and, with a little luck, a maiko hurrying to a dinner on Hanamikoji.

We start in Arashiyama, on the western edge of the city: the bamboo forest, where twenty-meter stalks bend over the path, and the garden of Tenryu-ji Temple, with a lake made seven hundred years ago precisely to reflect the mountain behind it.

We continue to Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion — covered with gold leaf, reflected in the water, surrounded by red maple trees in November — and to Ryoan-ji, the Zen garden of raked gravel and fifteen stones, from anywhere you sit, you can only see fourteen.

In the afternoon, Nishiki Market, "Kyoto's Kitchen": four hundred meters of stalls with pickles, tofu, tea, and sweets, to taste one by one.

An hour from Kyoto, Nara was the first capital of Japan. At Todai-ji, the largest wooden building in the world, stands the Great Buddha: fifteen meters of bronze, cast in the 8th century. In the surrounding park live twelve hundred free deer, considered messengers of the gods, who have learned to bow for biscuits.

We walk along the alley with three thousand stone lanterns to the Kasuga Taisha shrine and return to Kyoto for the evening: Kiyomizu-dera, the temple with the wooden terrace suspended on pillars above the hill, open at night only a few weeks a year, with maples illuminated from below. We are exactly in that window.

One hour and forty minutes by Shinkansen to the west. In Hiroshima we go to the Peace Memorial Park, built exactly under the site of the explosion on August 6, 1945: the Atomic Bomb Dome with its steel skeleton intentionally left as it remained, the cenotaph, the flame that burns until the last nuclear weapon disappears, and the museum - difficult, but necessary.

In the afternoon we take the ferry to Miyajima Island, one of Japan's three classic views. The great red torii gate of Itsukushima Shrine stands in the sea, and at high tide it seems to float. We stay until sunset, when the lanterns light up and the water turns purple.

The last Shinkansen ride, an hour and a half, to Osaka. We go up to the castle, the one with green roofs and golden ornaments, rebuilt on the stone walls from 1583, and go down to Kuromon market for lunch: grilled crab, tuna, takoyaki – Osaka is the city where Japanese people come to eat.

We spend the last hours on Dotonbori, the canal with giant illuminated signs, then transfer to Kansai airport for the overnight flight home.

We fly west and regain seven hours. We land in Otopeni in the morning.