I do not exercise on holiday. I do not wake up early to run. I eat whatever I want and I feel fine about all of it. Japan, somehow, lets me get away with this.
Johnny writes about his morning runs. He tracks his steps. He has opinions about park routes in different cities and which ones have the best views at 7am. I am not going to write about any of that because I have never done any of it. What I will tell you is that despite eating more on a Japan trip than at any other point in the year, I come back feeling roughly the same as when I left, and I think I understand why.
Japan Does the Work For You
A day in Tokyo involves more walking than I would normally do in a week at home. Train stations in Japan are not small — getting from one platform to another at Shinjuku is a fifteen-minute walk through underground corridors before you've even left the building. Then you walk to the restaurant. Then you walk to the next place. Then there are temple steps, and market alleys, and the general reality of navigating a dense city on foot.
By the time I get back to the hotel my step count is somewhere between 18,000 and 25,000, which I find genuinely baffling given that my entire strategy was to take it easy. I haven't run anywhere. I haven't done anything I would describe as exercise. Japan has just quietly made me walk half a marathon without asking permission.
The Food Is Lighter Than It Looks
This is the other thing. Japanese food is not diet food — I am eating ramen, fried skewers, rice at every meal, and whatever comes out of the konbini hot case at midnight. But it doesn't sit the same way a heavy Western meal does. Ramen broth is mostly water. The portions at an izakaya are lots of small things rather than one enormous thing. Even the deep-fried kushikatsu feels lighter than fish and chips somehow.
I'm not saying it's health food. I'm saying that eating a huge amount of Japanese food feels different to eating a huge amount of anything else, and the outcome, for me at least, has consistently been fine.
My Actual Approach
Walk everywhere because you have no choice. Eat whatever you want because the food is too good not to. Sleep properly. Don't drink as much as you would on a beach holiday — a beer with dinner is satisfying in a way that six drinks in a bar is not, and Japanese evenings tend to organise themselves that way naturally.
That's genuinely it. No morning runs, no calorie counting, no discipline of any kind. Johnny thinks I'm lucky. I think he's overcomplicating it.
You don't need a plan. Just walk everywhere, eat everything, and trust that Japan will sort the rest out. It has worked for me every single trip and I have never once been for a run.