Tsumago feels like an open-air museum, a 15-minute walk from end to end with dark-wood lattice-fronted buildings so perfectly preserved that even telephone poles have been banished from the streetscape. It was one of Japan's first protected historic areas, and the effect is startling: at dawn and dusk, when the day trippers have gone, the warm lantern light on aged timber transports you to Edo-era Japan with an immediacy that few places can match. Stay overnight and you'll have the quiet streets entirely to yourself.