Heidi Schoni and Karl Steffen went on a seven-week journey through Japan in the fall of 2010. Thanks to funding from the canton Thurgau, the artist couple, known under the name of steffenschoni, was able to make a long-time plan a reality. The media artists, whose work has had a focus on notions of plants and gardening for years, seized the opportunity to deepen their photographic research on Japanese kitchen gardens (hatake). They took over 3000 photographs on their journey from the urban sprawl of Tokyo, via the rural island Shikoku, to Kyushu, Hiroshima and Naoshima of which 30 are published in this volume. The book is number 14 of the facetten series and features texts by Christoph Neidhardt and Martin Preisser.