journalism

Well-known contributers reveal where they will be heading in 2013. Here, Anthony Horowitz looks forward to visiting temples and eating sushi in Japan

I have never been to Japan and I’m very excited to be heading there in April. I’m celebrating my 25th wedding anniversary and my wife has wanted to visit Tokyo ever since she saw Lost in Translation. We’re staying in the Park Hyatt, where much of the film was set. We’ll spend five days in the city, then take the bullet train (of course) to Kyoto.

I know very little about modern Japan but I have fantastical expectations: amazing sushi, neon lights, ryokans with smiling Japanese ladies and sliding paper walls, ancient shrines and temples, volcanoes (concealing, I hope, the headquarters of a villain planning to destroy the world), cherry blossom, the famous blue hour in the cities as the lights come on, a night at the Noh theatre, robots, sumo wrestlers and probably sky-high prices.

The new series of Foyle’s War is set in 1946 in the shadow of the nuclear bomb, so we’ll visit Hiroshima too. I’m told that the Itsukushima Shrine at sunset is unforgettable. Finally, I’m planning to have a plate of puffer fish, which can be deadly if wrongly prepared. I’ll let my dear wife taste it first.