After being nowhere else but Japan for the last six years it was perhaps inevitable that I’d experience some reverse culture shock when I went back to the UK for the festive season a few months ago. Many of these have been mentioned on the pages of Tokyo Fox before but that was many, many years ago when I was still finding my feet in Japan and blogging about such differences.
1. Opening hours – Japan’s lust for convenience means Continue reading
Back in August last year I was all set to meet up with a fellow Leicester City fan to watch RB Omiya Ardija but a couple of days before the match I got a message saying he’d taken an impromptu trip back to England. Viewing all his Insta stories from Leicester was actually what gave me the idea of returning home last Christmas having never given it a moment’s thought before that. His updates really did take me on a journey back in time and I wanted to replicate such nostalgia when I was back in the UK.
The short trip into Leicester (15 minutes by train) usually only happens once or twice for me whilst back home but I went there five times on this occasion, all in the name of live sport. A few of them were combined with looking around the city though which I have a great love and affection for. Eagle eyed readers may recall that I Continue reading
After an absence of six and a half years, Star Wars will finally return to the big screen in May with the Mandalorian and Grogu movie. Consequently, the promotion campaign for it is starting to ramp up a bit as the countdown to its release gets closer and closer.
Star Wars pop up stores are common in Tokyo all year round these days, but a few have recently opened to help promote the new film, and NTV Tower have put on a Continue reading
My idea of cycling around the Yamanote Line way back in 2009 was actually inspired by a former colleague of mine who did it all on foot over two days including a capsule hotel overnight at the midway point. I was never too interested in repeating that so settled for doing it by bicycle. Fast forward about a decade and a half though and I’d changed my mind. Well, kind of!
Needing some original Sunday morning dog walking ideas, my wife and I decided to walk round the famous green train line which passes through most of Tokyo’s urban centres in a loop. I should point out that our Continue reading
Even though I don’t particularly have any love for the famous American sports, I do seem to attend a few basketball and baseball games every year. I’ve even been to a couple of American football matches in the last few years, so I guess I have developed something of a taste for such sporting occasions.
As soon as I’d decided to go back to the UK last Christmas I began to check the Continue reading
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
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