There is only so much a writer can learn about a place from photographs, maps, and hours spent online. At some point, if you want to understand how a city sounds at street level, how a hotel lobby feels late in the afternoon, or what happens when you descend a narrow staircase into a crowded basement bar, you have to go there. That was the idea behind the research trip my husband, Gareth, and I took to Japan while I was developing the second book in my wildlife crime thriller