My appearance at the Green Ireland Festival in Yoyogi Park two years ago really sparked my interest for going to a few more similar celebrations in Tokyo that year. The Irish festival was the first I had been to in many, many years and I had a really great time so was keen to return but with the addition of also taking in the long running St. Patrick’s Day parade taking place nearby.
This parade has been a fixture on the Japanese calendar for as long as I can remember but Continue reading
One of the things I was looking forward to when I first arrived in Japan was using it as a hub for exploring other parts of Asia. Of course, I had to familiarise myself with Japan first but once that had happened, I would be jetting off regularly on my own to nearby countries. That probably took longer than expected though and it wasn’t until 2006 that I finally did some solo travel in a place which had been part of the UK less than a decade earlier.
Despite the connection to my home country, I think I was still expecting Hong Kong to just be Continue reading
You can take the man out of Japan, but you can’t take Japan out of the man!
The focal point on my recent trip back to my home country was eating British food I’m unable to get so easily in Tokyo but I also wanted to experience some Japanese food in the UK. On my previous trip six years ago, I was with my wife and so we spent more time in London where we inevitably went to a few Japanese eateries. This time though I was alone and more home-based so the main focus this time was on Continue reading
Some British sports fans like to poke fun at American baseball fans whenever they talk about the World Series as it’s not really a global competition and only part of the domestic game stateside. That’s for the club game though but there actually is a world national tournament known as the World Baseball Classic (WBC) which is basically the World Cup of baseball. Britain is in it too and Americans will no doubt be laughing back at us after they’ve thrashed us in the Pool match.
This world tournament has been around since the turn of the century not that I was aware of it until 2023 when Japan won it. The 2026 version is the sixth iteration of the event and involves Continue reading
As much as I liked ‘Rogue One‘ (2016) I have to admit that I wasn’t immediately excited when it was announced in 2018 that there would be a prequel to that film (which in itself was a prequel to the original 1977 Star Wars movie) in the form of a streaming series about its main character Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). However, the news that ‘Andor‘ would be written by Tony Gilroy did make me take notice as I liked some of his previous work and he did supposedly make some big improvements to the ‘Rogue One‘ story.
Naturally, by the time season one of ‘Andor‘ was released in 2022 I was more enamored by the idea but it Continue reading
Back in the early 2000s, I read a book by Canadian author Will Ferguson about his journey following the cherry blossom trail from south to North in ‘Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan‘ which was later retitled ‘Hitching Rides with Buddha‘. He spent five years in Japan during the 1990s and has still seen a far, far greater amount of sakura (cherry blossoms) than me despite residing here much longer than him. I can’t recall ever seeing anything of the iconic flower outside of Tokyo or Saitama though.
That finally changed last weekend (February 22nd) when we were in Continue reading
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to experience the life of an insect crawling across the ceiling of a room? This unique place featuring inverted rooms can help you do that!
This attraction came to my attention earlier a year or two ago in one of those Instagram reels which automatically play as you scroll through your feed. I can’t remember exactly but it was something along the lines of the most unique buildings in the world. A few places in Japan covered on Tokyo Fox many moons ago in the ‘Tokyo Modern Architecture‘ series featured in the list and one of the other buildings was Continue reading
It’s been 20 years since the Tokyo Fox blog began but it’s not going to be celebrated here as I kind of did that for previous anniversaries. The story of this site was told in the 10th birthday special, and five years later I shared the most popular and least popular posts from each year up to that point including how many hits they had had.
Those landmarks were very much the heyday in terms of recognition and popularity with the average number of daily hits at one time getting close to the 10,000 mark. It’s a more modest Continue reading
With around 50 inhabited islands, Japan’s most extreme south is an area often considered to be the tropical paradise of the country, so when I was on my way there 20 years ago, I was very much looking forward to experiencing a warmer climate than Tokyo as well as the fine beaches, turquoise waters and traditional culture. It promised much but did it live up to expectations?
At that point in my life, I was only really aware of this deep south-west part of Japan because it had been the Continue reading
As I mentioned in my previous post about the Peak District border, my original plan was to just take the train to see the station with an Oasis connection and then return to Leicester. However, when my dad showed an interest, it turned into a father and son day out taking in a few other sights in the area.
There is of course a lot more to this area of Derbyshire (UK) than having a railway station feature on the sleeve of an Oasis single in the mid-90s, and I was ultimately very glad that I got to Continue reading
Tokyo Fox (東京狐) 