A PECULIARITY of conversations about Japan is that almost everyone, no matter how scant their experience, knows exactly what they think about the place.

Japan, you will hear, is a beeping, neon, sci-fi wonderland where high-tech gnomes inhabit soaring skyscrapers and even the lavatory seats have control panels. Others will talk of misty mountains and rice paddies tended by old men in pointy hats or return with tales of hospitality, courtesy and almost embarrassing kindness.

Each one of these images is accurate, in its way, but none represents more than a fraction of the whole. Few nations — certainly none as powerful as the second-richest country in the world — are so burdened by cliché. Perhaps the best reason for coming to Japan is to find out for yourself what it is really like.

Even then, it depends — on where and when you go, how you travel and what you choose to do while you are there. A glance at an atlas confirms the quality that surprises many first-time visitors to Japan — its variety.

The northernmost capes have a Siberian climate and, in the cold months, pack-ice clogs the ports of the Sea of Okhotsk, while, 1,800 miles (2,900km) south are subtropical islands from which, on a clear day, you can see Taiwan. Linking these extremes is an uncountable chain of mountainous islands. The upper slopes have volcanoes, hot springs, hiking trails, deer and bears; the lowland plains contain some of the biggest and most exciting cities in the world.

The culture fostered by this geography is no less varied. Among Japan’s Buddhist temples are the oldest and biggest wooden structures anywhere in the world; the country’s 20th-century architects, by contrast, have created bold and bizarre buildings in steel and glass. Side by side with these monuments to consumerism are the shrines of Shinto, a living nature religion as old as recorded history.

Amid such richness there are a thousand holidays to be had, and an efficient public transport system which makes travelling long distances a pleasure. In a well-organised fortnight, it is possible to ski in Hokkaido, bathe in hot springs in the Japan Alps, then take in kabuki theatre in Tokyo, temple architecture in Kyoto, modern history in Hiroshima and a cruise across the Inland Sea to end up sunbathing on a beach in Okinawa.

Japan’s uniqueness has everything to do with its history. From the 17th to late 19th centuries, a time of unprecedented modernisation in the wider world, Japan was a closed country, locked by its samurai rulers in a perpetual medieval age.

Japan is like one of those freakish Oceanic islands, isolated from the continental mainstream by leagues of sea, where nature is left to go about its own business, nurturing weird blooms and bizarre wildlife, a country of cultural platypuses.

For years, domestic travellers provided all the business that the tourist industry could absorb, and Japan had little interest in attracting foreign visitors. But the bursting of the economic bubble in the 1990s has created openings for foreign tourists. Avid for foreign currency, the Government has launched a Visit Japan Campaign, spearheaded by its long-haired Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi.

Most importantly, price deflation has taken the sting out of the factor which most often deters potential holidaymakers from visiting Japan — its expense. Japan will never be as cheap as India or Thailand, but neither need it be ruinously expensive and, compared with the bedlam of many East Asian destinations, standards of service, safety and hygiene are unsurpassed.

The Japan Rail Pass, which allows unlimited travel on a nationwide network of trains, is one of the great travel bargains. Some of the best deals — the homely izakaya restaurants, and traditional ryokan and minshuku inns — are cultural experiences in their own right, and even the most cash-strapped traveller will find accommodation that is clean and secure, trains which run on time and food that will never give you a bug.

Japan is the world’s most underrated travel destination. No one who visits Japan will be disappointed, even if they return less sure what to make of it all than when they arrived.

• Richard Lloyd Parry is also author of the guide books Japan and Tokyo, Kyoto and Ancient Nara (both published by Cadogan, £15.99 each).

Times recommends

• The world's 10 weirdest things to eat
• Correspondents: hoteliers revenge for Tripadvisor
• A slow, ponderous journey up the Mekong