TOKYO -- Many visitors to Japan hunger for a glimpse of the country as it was before modernity washed over it in the mid-19th century.
Amid the neon and concrete of Tokyo or Osaka, it can be hard to imagine that there is anything left of old Japan, outside of Kyoto. But traces can be found in well-preserved post towns -- places whose rows of wooden houses and whitewashed sake storehouses evoke a bygone age.
