Where to travel next if you loved Japan

Work out which part of Japan you loved, because the answer is completely different depending on what it was.

People come back from Japan attached to quite different things: the depth of the culture, the fact that everything worked, the food, the landscapes, or the sheer politeness of daily life. Each one points somewhere else.

In short

• Loved the cultural depth? China — twenty days, and on a scale Japan never attempts
• Loved the food and the daily texture? Thailand — fourteen days, and the closest thing to Japan's street-level pleasure
• Loved the landscapes and the calm? Sri Lanka — fifteen days, small, green and unhurried
• Loved the efficiency? Be warned. Nowhere else is Japan
• Or simply go back: our twenty-day route covers what a fortnight cannot

Japan rewards close reading. China rewards standing back.

Our twenty-day route runs from Beijing and the Great Wall to the imperial city of Xi'an, then down the Yangtze through the gorges by boat, into Yunnan for Lijiang, the Buddha grottoes at Shibao Mountain and Erhai Lake, the Stone Forest, a bamboo raft on the Yulong River, the rice terraces, and out through Shanghai.

What it shares with Japan is a civilisation of enormous age with living continuity. What it does not share is the intimacy — this is a country of vast distances, and even in three weeks you are sketching it.

Two internal flights, a maximum of 14 travellers, and twenty days. Our full comparison is at Japan or China.

Thailand is the country on this page that most resembles Japan in one specific way: the ordinary, everyday level of it is superb. Markets, street food, canal life, temples you pass rather than visit.

Our fourteen-day route covers Bangkok — the Grand Palace, the Thonburi canal, Chinatown — the Maeklong railway market and the floating market at Amphawa, the River Kwai at Kanchanaburi, Ayutthaya, then Chiang Mai for the old Lanna city, a meeting with a monk, a cooking class and two days with rescued elephants, then the rainforest at Khao Sok and three days on Koh Samui to finish.

It is warmer, cheaper and less orderly than Japan, and it ends at the beach, which Japan does not. Two internal flights, maximum 12 travellers.

The quietest answer on this page, and the one travellers are most often surprised by.

Sri Lanka is small — you are never far from anywhere — which gives it something of Japan's density without any of Japan's intensity. Fifteen days take in Colombo, the Dutch fort at Galle, an elephant safari at Udawalawe, three nights in the hill country at Ella with the tea-country train, Kandy, the rock fortress at Sigiriya, the ancient cities of Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura, and three days by the sea at Trincomalee.

What it shares with Japan: tea as a serious cultural matter, Buddhism as a living daily practice rather than a monument, and a landscape that changes completely within short distances.

No internal flights, maximum 12 travellers. See two weeks in Sri Lanka.

The warning. If what you loved about Japan was that everything worked — trains to the second, immaculate streets, an entire country running quietly and exactly — then nowhere on this page will give you that, and neither will anywhere else. Japan is an outlier. Going somewhere else expecting it is the most common way to be disappointed by an otherwise excellent trip.

The case for going back. A fortnight in Japan covers the famous route and leaves out most of the country. Our twenty-day route adds Koyasan, Yoshino, the Nakasendo post road, Matsumoto, Nagano, Kamakura and Nikko — and there is a twelve-day route through Kanazawa and the Gassho-zukuri villages of Ainokura that most first-time visitors never see.

Every trip here is land-only and runs on guaranteed departures. If you would rather compare across the whole region, which Asian country to visit first sets them out together.

Ask yourself what you would tell a friend about Japan first, unprompted.

"The temples, and how old everything is." → China.

"The food, and just walking around." → Thailand.

"How calm it was, and the landscape." → Sri Lanka.

"All of it, and I want to go back." → Go back. There is far more of Japan than a fortnight reaches.

Whichever you choose, the things that made the Japan trip work are the same on all of them: a small group, a guide who lives there, land-only pricing so you book the flights that suit you, and a departure that goes ahead regardless of how many others have booked.

If you want to compare on practical grounds instead — walking, heat, flight length — which Asian country to visit first and long-haul destinations if you struggle in the heat are the better pages.