Japan is one of those rare destinations that systematically defeats the conventional approach to travel — because what Japan offers most essentially — the quality of attention that it embodies and rewards — is incompatible with speed.
This quality of attention — monozukuri, kodawari, the seriousness with which any practice is approached — is visible everywhere if you are moving slowly enough to see it. In the way soba is made at a counter where a chef has been making it for forty years. In the garden tended by the same family for four generations.
For the midlife woman traveling alone or with a friend, Japan offers a safety and warmth that can be surprising. The Japanese hospitality — omotenashi — is genuine and specific, expressed through extraordinary attentiveness to what the guest needs.
Japan teaches, slowly and insistently, that the quality of an experience has very little to do with its scale and almost everything to do with the attention brought to it.
The food alone is worth the trip. Not merely the celebrated sushi and ramen, but the quotidian pleasures: the convenience store onigiri, the vending machine coffee on a cold morning. Japan is a country where food is taken with complete seriousness at every level.