ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the multi-sensory qualities of mobile tourist experiences to disavow assumptions that they merely comprise uneventful travel from A to B – the locations between journeys at which tourism really takes place. It contends that the extremely varied sensorial qualities of such journeys are integral to tourist experience. The chapter focuses on the divergence between tourist mobilities that satisfy desires for comfort, convenience and predictability, and those that offer a vigorous enlivening of corporeal and affective experience. It primarily draws on examples from Asia, and particularly Japan, in elucidating the discussion. The chapter discusses how it further contextualise forms of tourist mobility. It emphasises the enormous inequalities in mobility and the persistence of endemic forms of immobility which shape who is able to move and to where. The chapter considers the centrality of particular mobile experiences to particular tourist adventures.
