In winter, Japan’s northernmost main island Hokkaido is a place of snow-covered forests and white-crested volcanoes mirrored in glacial lakes. It’s also the land of the Ainu, an Indigenous people intimately connected to the environment through their hunting, fishing and storytelling traditions, and animist beliefs

The buzzing city of Osaka is a real foodie paradise, as well as a gateway to some of the country’s top sights

Winter has a way of slowing life down in the gentlest of ways, setting in like a quiet spell or a morning’s frost. Days feel softer and nights longer, the darkness illuminated by the warm glow of ligh

Plant your bulbs now for a lovely bright start to spring

Vincent van Gogh made sunflowers his personal motifs, but, when he looked to experiment with colour, a full florist’s roster of irises, roses, poppies, poured out of his brush, as Michael Prodger discovers

JAPAN IS A LAND FULL OF UNIQUE, DIVERSE EXPERIENCES, AND KOKO HOTEL IS THE GATEWAY TO ITS LESSER-VISITED CORNERS.