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Three Japanese Road Trips Through a Craft Lens
Some of Japan’s most fascinating finds lie beyond its best-known cities, in rural regions where centuries-old craft traditions are still very much intact. Photographer-author and longtime resident Ben Richards maps three road trips through Ishikawa, Kyushu, and the Kyoto countryside, following the artisans, materials, and landscapes that define each region.
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Kyoto Black Book
For all its temples, shrines and other visible layers of history, Kyoto isn’t a city preserved in amber. Its old machiya house some of its most exciting restaurants and shops, young artisans carry on generations-old family crafts, and contemporary galleries sit alongside mossy gardens, tea houses, and century-old bars.
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Giselle Go of DAMDAM
Tokyo-based DAMDAM co-founder Giselle Go has built her skincare line around ancient Japanese ingredients like rice, matcha, shiso, and ume, and many of the country’s everyday rituals have found their…
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Learning to Love Osaka
After more than a dozen years of traveling around Japan, writer Adam H. Graham had never quite warmed to Osaka: too loud, too crowded, too chaotic for a committed introvert. On a recent return, he finally cracked the code to Japan’s famously brash second city.
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Capella Kyoto, Japan
On the site of a 150-year-old school in a historic Kyoto neighborhood, Capella’s first hotel in Japan, designed by Kengo Kuma, embodies the city’s cultural refinement—with Japanese craft and art, courtyard gardens, hot-spring-fed onsen, and rare access to local geisha traditions.
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Yolo Journal Summer Issue 22
Summer 2026
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