There was a time when one could always rely on the August O-bon holiday season being a hot and sunny time but this year again consisted of lots of rain albeit not as much as last year! The weather at the start of our trip though was actually pretty good and the usual trip to Komuroyama Park on day one even offered a sight of Mount Fuji in the distance which always adds to the appeal of this lovely, vast, spacious place.
Away from Tokyo and with barely anyone else around, our Continue reading
Although I’d been to both Hong Kong and Taiwan in 2006 I was still itching to visit mainland China so one year later I decided to head to capital city Beijing (via a transit in Shanghai) for a short break. These were very different times when I used to frequently take holidays overseas and indeed this trip to China was on the back of travels in the Philippines, India and Australia in the same year!
Due to the language barrier I was a bit more apprehensive than usual about having to navigate my way to my hotel by bus, subway and on foot during a time before smartphones! Fortunately, I Continue reading
It’s very rare that sequels are released over five decades after the original but that is what happened with Mary Poppins back in 2018. Incedibly, it’s not actually the longest gap between films in a franchise as that record goes to the ‘Bambi‘ movies which were 64 years apart.
The original ‘Mary Poppins‘ (1964) is a much-loved classic film that many, many generations have grown up with. So much of the movie, particularly the songs, are iconic so making a sequel 54 years years later was a pretty daunting challenge for director Rob Marshall. It was never going to be as impactful as the original but Continue reading
Having only watched a single game in each of the last two seasons I really was not expecting to do too many more matches this year, especially with the strict Covid_19 measures still in place for much of the season. However, I ended up going to 11 live games at 10 different stadiums. A few of them have had their own blog posts during 2022 but the majority of them weren’t really considered to be worthy of a solitary post so I have collated them into this rankings list. It’s certainly not one to be taken too seriously as it’s based on a mixture of Continue reading
As I stood with my bicycle at the Itoku Inari Daimyojin in Shinjuku mid-November last year I felt no other emotion than a bit of relief. I had completed my fairly pointless mission of cycling to every single Inari Shrine (as listed on Google Maps!) for each of Tokyo’s 23 wards.
That celebration was purely for the camera and I really wasn’t feeling that emotional!
It had taken me 19 months to get to that point and on 23 separate days I had visited Continue reading
Even though I almost never buy anything from them, the sight of a vending machine dispensing alcohol (usually beer) always catches my attention. Such machines are certainly not so common in city centres anymore so imagine how surprised I was to see that you could buy 110 different types of sake from an auto dispenser. Not only that but it was in a train station too!
The first major stop on my recent trip to Niigata Prefecture was Continue reading
Whilst season two of alphabet dating is taking place I thought I could fill that void with a restrospecive series which is certainly an easier operation as they were not done in alphabetical order which can be a little stressful and frustrating at times.
Season 0 will throw back to places and things we’ve done in Greater Tokyo since 2011. I generally hate the term Continue reading
To celebrate the unofficial toilet day on November 10th in Japan I have decided to deposit a compilation of my favourite public lavatories in Tokyo. The Tokyo Fox site sure is plumbing to low depths but hopefully you will be bowel-ed over and end up thinking it’s an excrement idea!
Japan is such a backwards country at times when it comes to many things but if they put just half as much effort into those things as they do in coming up with toilet ideas then it really might help move the country Continue reading
Countless trips to Izu over the last few years have tended to dominate the travel content on Tokyo Fox but absolutely none of it was of places on the west coast of the Peninsula. Whilst the north, the east, a bit of the south and some of the central area are accessible by train, the west really is inconvenient without the use of a vehicle.
I have considered taking a series of buses to get over to that side before (it is possible and I do often have the time!) but always decided against it and thought Continue reading
Usually whenever I had a few consecutive days off 15 years ago I would be hopping on a plane and flying off to another country. However, I did spend the occasional long weekend in Tokyo and this particular one was very busy and full of activity.
Day One: Tokyo’s Least Known Swimming Pool
My friend Ethan loved theme-parks, and we went to a fair few of them over the years such as Fuji-Q Highlands, Hawaiian Spa Resort, Nagashima Spa-Land, Toshimaen and even Six Flags Magic Mountain in the USA. The one we went to on the first day of this busy three day weekend was Tokyo Summerland which is a big water amusement park in north-west Tokyo.
I had previously visited the place a couple of years earlier and the indoor swimming pool was a sight to behold for all the wrong reasons! When the wave machine came into operation Continue reading
Tokyo Fox (東京狐) 