Whilst I don’t really expect to see a Brit in action at the back end of tennis tournaments, I always hope that the stars align so that I can follow the fortunes of them, and this time I got to complete the full set of British players taking part at this year’s Japan Open.
Qualifying started last Saturday (October 24th) but my Toray Pan Pacific Open (TPPO) experience began the following day on the Show Court (the second main court) where a Grand Slam champion was taking on Continue reading
Japan’s international rugby test match against Fiji last Saturday afternoon (October 24th) was the second time the two sides had faced off against each other in five weeks. Whilst this one was basically just an exhibition game to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Japan Rugby Football Union (JRFU), the previous one (September 19th) was arguably a Continue reading
According to the online dinosaur museum website there are nearly 1000 dinosaur related places in Japan with the vast majority of them being parks and playgrounds. I thought I’d visited a fair few but it seems that I’ve barely scratched the surface!
To be fair, I have visited some of the major ones as many Continue reading
In the wake of the Tim Burton directed ‘Batman‘ (1989) I remember seeing a fair few people wearing the t-shirt with the bat logo on it. Indeed, my wife had one in the early years of us first meeting which I was sadly impressed by! Other than that classic t-shirt design and the mug I had as a child, I really cannot recall seeing too much other merchandise available from that franchise as the years and even the decades passed by. Fast forward to the present and things are quite different.
The success of multiple Star Wars and Marvel pop-up shops in Japan has seen other franchises sit up and take note. With the huge influx of tourists visiting the country these days and a very weak local currency, it’s an Continue reading
After finishing #LionDay, I soon began to think about the next tenuously themed day building up to a sports event. It was admittedly a bit of a struggle but after looking through the names and nicknames of many, many Japanese football, rugby, baseball, volleyball, basketball, table tennis and American football teams I finally hit on the idea of #ZDay.
It was good to approach the theme day from yet another angle too rather than going down the previous colour/country/animal (that will happen one day though, I’m sure!) route. You could call this a spin-off of the Continue reading
Two trips of a lifetime in just over a month surely can’t be real but that is exactly what I did when I booked both of my trips to Jordan and the USA at the same time 15 years ago. Whilst the former was my first trip to the Middle East, the latter was my return to a place I first went to nine years earlier. On that occasion I was on my own at the end of a 15-month backpacking trip around the world that concluded in California but this time I was in the USA with my number one American friend Ethan for a road trip through four states.
Day 1: After a night flight from Tokyo, I was met at LAX by Ethan for our first adventure together in a few years. After renting a car we had a quick stop at the famed Continue reading
Whilst football teams usually only play once or twice a week, it’s very different in baseball where the sides are in action for five or six days meaning that for the real hardcore supporters ten games can be racked up in about a fortnight. I am not really a baseball fan though so a few games each year is usually more than enough for me.
When I went to my first game of 2026 in early March I did not think for a moment that I’d ever go to ten games. However, that is what happened and I even managed to Continue reading
Even when you live far away from the host city it’s sometimes possible to experience some live action and that was the case with the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games.
Having been lucky enough to witness track cycling in Izu (Shizuoka Prefecture) at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics I was heavily considering returning there to see the same event taking place off-site. Back then, buses were provided from Ito station to the remote Velodrome in the middle of the mountains. That wasn’t the case this time though meaning that it would involve too much effort in getting there from my family’s holiday home in Ito city.
It was only after giving up on the Velodrome cycling that I realised Continue reading
It’s been five years since ‘No Time to Die‘ (2021) was finally released having been delayed a few times due to the global coronavirus pandemic. In the old days each and every James Bond movie was pretty much a standalone story but for Daniel Craig’s time as the double agent there has been some kind of continuity throughout. This fifth and final outing certainly puts a full stop on that story!
This 25th Eon-produced 007 movie has been fairly divisive among the Bond community but I actually liked it a lot and would certainly put it Continue reading
Springtime and early summer was a busy period in Japan for Star Wars with a string of events taking place for May the 4th and building hype for the release of ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu‘ movie. Just as I thought things had gone a little quiet a few pop-up stores appeared in Shinagawa and Shibuya along with an exhibit displaying some very rare and expensive screen-used movie props.
As nice and wonderful as it is to see all things relating to the sci-fi saga, not much gets better than seeing authentic Continue reading
