About the author

Lee Morse

I’m Lee Morse, a writer living on Australia’s Gold Coast. Born in Australia to British parents, I spent most of my first forty years in the UK. My interest in Japan began with Japanese cinema in the 1990s, followed by tentative steps into the language through evening classes offered at work.

The first visit came around 2011, travelling with my daughter as part of a surf lifesaving club exchange. In Fujisawa, we trained with local lifesavers and stayed with a host family. My daughter helped the fishermen haul in their nets; an evening over shōchū with our host became a lengthy conversation despite our limited shared vocabulary. Those encounters have stayed with me through many subsequent visits.

Since then, my daughter and I have returned together and separately. Our interests overlap without being identical, and making room for each other’s enthusiasms has taken us towards things we might otherwise have passed by.

This book grew out of planning another journey with her and her boyfriend. We share an interest in the arts, and the search for festivals taking place during our trip exposed a familiar frustration. Dates and locations were easy to find. Explanations of the history, cultural significance and stories being retold were much harder to come by. Research for that journey gradually became the backbone of The Thoughtful Traveller’s Guide to Japan.

Film, literature and games remain part of that curiosity. Shenmue was an early introduction to Japan through a game; Kunitsu-Gami and the Yakuza series have continued that interest. Kobayashi’s Kwaidan is a film discovery that left a strong impression. Its third story was particularly mesmerising, especially the biwa performance running through it.

Learning Japanese is still a work in progress, driven by the wish to communicate better when travelling and to enjoy more of Japan’s films, books and games in their original language.

The guide brings these interests together with the practical questions of planning a journey: choosing where to go, and understanding more of what you find when you arrive.