Japan in April: The Definitive Honeymoon Guide

For honeymooners, this creates a paradox. You are visiting at the most extraordinary time of year, which means you are visiting at the most crowded time of year. The solution, as with most things in Japan, lies in knowing where to go and how to navigate, and in accepting that certain moments of beauty will require patience to reach.

The finest honeymoon accommodation in Japan occupies three distinct categories: the luxury Western hotel, the great ryokan, and the small private villa. Each offers a different relationship with the country, and the ideal itinerary combines all three.

Arrive in Tokyo, two nights at the Aman Tokyo or the Park Hyatt. Adjust to the time difference, explore Yanaka and Daikanyama, eat ramen at midnight. Then the bullet train south to Kyoto: check into the Tawaraya, which has been operating as a ryokan since 1709 and is the most perfect small hotel in the world. Three nights here, walking through Higashiyama in the early morning before the day trippers arrive, eating kaiseki at Kikunoi, sitting in the garden in the late afternoon.

From Kyoto, a car south to the Ise Peninsula, where the shrines sit in cedar forests so old and so quiet that speaking above a whisper feels wrong. Then, if time and budget allow, a night in Hakone, not for the town, but for the view of Fuji across the lake at dawn, which is one of the most reliable extraordinary experiences on earth.