By Declan BarryWe have added sixteen new destinations to the planner, which pushes the catalogue past 200 places. The point of each addition is the same: to close the small gaps that made some routes harder to plan than they needed to be, and to give you good reasons to slow down between the big cities rather than rush past them.
We keep doing this because the planner is only as useful as the places it knows about. Every new destination comes with the same full treatment as the rest, a real location on the map, a ranked list of things to do drawn from what visitors actually rate, the practical guides for getting around and where to stay, and travel times that let the route generator slot it into a trip properly.
New around Tokyo and the Kanto coast
Enoshima is a shrine-topped island an hour from the city, easy to pair with Kamakura. Mount Takao is a forested temple mountain on Tokyo's western edge, the gentlest half-day hike in Greater Tokyo. Narita is the temple town beside the airport, ideal for a layover, and Odawara is the castle town and shinkansen gateway to Hakone.
Down the Tokaido and into the mountains
Shizuoka brings Tokugawa history, green-tea hills and Fuji views from the coast, while Hamamatsu adds Lake Hamana, a castle and the city that builds the world's pianos. Up in the Nagano hills, Yudanaka is the hot-spring village beneath the snow-monkey valley.
Kansai beyond the headline cities
Otsu sits on Lake Biwa ten minutes from Kyoto, with heavyweight temples and far fewer crowds. Iga is the real ninja heartland, castle and all. Awaji Island brings whirlpools, flower fields and the bridge from Kobe.
The west and the islands
Yamaguchi is the quiet former Kyoto of the West, and Shimonoseki is the pufferfish port on the straits facing Kyushu. Kitakyushu is the retro-port gateway into Kyushu, and Shodoshima is the olive island of the Inland Sea.
Further north
In Tohoku, Lake Towada and the Oirase Gorge offer some of the country's best autumn colour, and Ouchi-juku preserves a full street of thatched Edo post-town houses in the Fukushima hills.
What comes next
We ship additions like these regularly and write each batch up here. If there is a place you think we should cover, or one of these new pages is missing something, tell us. We are building the planner we want to use ourselves, and the more places it knows well, the better every itinerary it builds.