2023 is the year of the rabbit according to the Chinese Zodiac. This is something that pretty much every Japanese person will already be aware of after the Hatsumode (first visit to a shrine or temple at the start of the year) and New Years greeting card (nengajo) customs where the Twelve Animal Signs of the Chinese Zodiac are usually incorporated into the designs as well as the stamps.
The thousands and thousands of shrines in Japan often have the likes of Continue reading
So 2023 has only just begun and already Tokyo Fox is looking back!! For just over a decade now there have been exactly ten new posts on here each and every month and these are the twenty from 2022 which got the most hits…excluding sponsored or TF Top 10 list posts! Of course those entries from earlier in the year had more time to accumulate hits so don’t Continue reading
There was always the plan to have ten filming locations posts on Tokyo Fox this year but I ended up falling just short. As I was considering the idea of discarding this traditional end-of-year closing post, I then had the brainwave of including the two from 2021 to ensure a full top ten list.
1. Fast & Furious 6, 2013 (Click here)
2. The Continue reading
The build-up to Christmas this year was fairly unique as the FIFA World Cup was right in the midst of it, and so that certainly interfered with festive activities, particularly the new Christmas movies (mostly from Hallmark) which I like to watch each year. Last year I watched a whopping 69 festive films during the countdown to Christmas season but this year was a far more modest number. The full list (*) is at the foot of this post for those who are interested! Why wouldn’t you be?!!
One of the symbols of Christmas is of course the tree and there are many elaborately decorated ones in and around Tokyo. Last year we went to see some Harry Potter-related trees in Marunouchi, and this time we saw a Continue reading
This lame and lazy half-assed compilation post idea was ushered in at the end of 2018 with an eye on permanently replacing the ‘TF Top 10……Filming Location Trips For (year)’ series which has been running out of steam over the last few years yet is incredibly back this year after a break 12 months ago.
Just to be clear, some of these pictures were indeed taken in 2021 but did not appear on the Tokyo Fox site until this year. They say a picture paints a thousand words so rather than write a load of words about these photos, I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.
1. A-Bomb Dome, Hiroshima Prefecture. More details here
2. Devil Head Slide, Continue reading
When the FIFA World Cup comes round every four years it always takes me back to when I was a child experiencing my first two tournaments in Mexico ’86 and Italia ’90 respectively. They were such different times when very few live games were shown on TV and the foreign teams and players were something of an unknown quantity.
Football, and indeed football on TV, has changed a lot over that time. Doing things like filling in a wall chart or collecting stickers albums cans help relive childhood memories but it’s Continue reading
The idea of travelling to Iceland was never really on my radar but when a friend said he was going there with a mate for the New Year holiday and that I could join them, I didn’t hesitate in saying yes as such opportunities don’t present themselves too often.
Heavy rain in Reykjavik meant the plane was Continue reading
23 individual posts for each ward plus seven compilations (including this one) is one of the least interesting statistics for this overly-long series which has been limping on to this conclusion. This will indeed be the final post about this challenge as it is time to move on but lets bow out with some statistics from that time in the saddle… Continue reading
Given the number of visits we make to to Izu each and every year, there will surely be a time when there is nothing blog-worthy to report. Unbelievably, that time is not now though! As soon as we got the dog’s travel bag out of the cupboard, he was excitedly wagging his tail and couldn’t wait to get inside and get on the road.
We disembarked at Atami station as my father-in-law said he’d pick us up from there but before his arrival we had a quick walk around the area in front of the station which is a 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
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