Having only watched a single game in 2020 and 2021 respectively I really was not expecting to do too many more matches in 2022, especially with the strict Covid_19 measures still in place for much of the season. However, I ended up going to 12 live games at 11 different stadiums and so wanted to equal or better that in 2023.
Things went much better than planned and by the start of July I had already been to Continue reading
The chances are that if you come to Tokyo and your itinerary is in the hands of a Japanese person then this interactive art exhibition will not feature at all. There is, for better or worse, often something of a discrepancy between places that are really popular with tourists but are pretty much unknown by the locals. The Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku is one such example and teamLab Planets in Toyosu is another where the vast majority of visitors are from overseas.
For many years now I’ve seen articles and posts on social media about this place but I had never taken too much note of them or really had any interest in visiting it. However, that changed when my Continue reading
Watching the evening or morning weather forecast is such an important part of daily life for Japanese people (as indeed it is for many other nationalities around the world) who subsequently plan their day accordingly. It’s something of an obsession. Personally, I don’t always look so closely at the forecast details as I don’t want it to dictate my life or influence my mood. However, I did see it last Monday morning (February 5th) when heavy snow was forecast for later in the day. I feel it’s often wrong or exaggerated, and as it was dry and cloudy that morning I totally dismissed it and stubbornly cycled the 15 kilometres to work as usual. I don’t mind a challenge for going home but didn’t quite expect what was to come!
The moment I got off my bike around lunchtime it started to snow very, very lightly. As the hours passed whilst I slaved away I could see the snow Continue reading
The third and final season of this dating challenge wrapped late last year in December after about 12 months of working our way through the alphabet. This series is one that probably looks quite fun and exciting from the outside but behind the scenes it can be quite stressful as my wife still has no idea about any of this, and gently suggesting certain places or activities can often be met with fairly instant rejections! Plus, after three seasons it really is quite difficult Continue reading
Late last Summer I received an e-mail from a reader of this site who had seen a lot of my posts about sights in the Izu area of Shizuoka Prefecture. He wanted information on a very interesting heritage museum I’d never heard of, and one that the tourist information centre in Atami claims doesn’t exist.
The pagoda, which originally opened in 1970 and sits atop a mountain, supposedly features all sorts of military stuff with a basement containing some exhibits relating to history’s most controversial figures like Continue reading
In the wake of attending 20+ different sports in 2023, pretty much every upcoming event gets promoted on my social media or directly in my inbox. I recently caught sight of a motor-cycle event in Saitama Prefecture taking place over a long weekend in mid-January. I had never heard of the stadium so looked it up on Google Maps and saw that I would be able to cycle there in less than an hour. Scrolling down through the various ticket prices eventually took me to one for just 1000 yen so I bought it without too much thought as it’d give me something new to do on the Friday when I was off work.
After booking the ticket I began to dig a bit deeper for what I’d got myself involved in thinking I was about to see something like speedway or motorcyle racing. It soon dawned on me that I had Continue reading
Compared to the western world, Japan is still very much a land of meat and fish eaters. It is a huge part of their culture and it’s hard to see it changing anytime soon, if ever! However, with the vast increase in foreign tourism to Japan in the last year a few vegetarian restaurants have begun popping up to cater for such tastes which are far more common among westerners.
In need of some exercise I decided to cycle over to the eastern part of Tokyo to tick off a few little places I’d long had earmarked on Google Maps as wanting to visit. One of them included this vegetarian gyoza restaurant in Continue reading
The east coast of Izu Peninsula is one that I have explored in great detail during numerous visits to the area over the last seven years or so. There are many great places but if I had to pick just one sight to see then it’d probably have to be Mount Omuro; the picture postcard and aesthetically-pleasing volcano. We’ve previously visited it in Autumn and Summer but never in Winter. It was time to change that on our most recent trip to that part of Shizuoka Prefecture during Continue reading
Usually these complete travel posts comprise activities and sights done and seen over a few days but this one to Chiba at the start of last year was just one exhaustingly long day trip. It spawned a fair few posts so here is the compilation of all of them. I would not recommend trying to replicate this in any way!
The journey to Chiba station, and then onto Choshi was uneventful but from there I got to ride on the quaintest rural line in the Greater Tokyo area; the wonderful Continue reading
Seasons one and two (as well as the prequel season zero) of alphabet dating certainly pushed the boundaries of what a “date” is, and that continues in season three with even more tenuous examples for each letter of the alphabet. For the record, doing something together (no matter what it is!) counts as a date in this series which is not always about visiting glamorous places and doing exciting things but just getting out there and exploring locations we wouldn’t normally go to. Without further ado, lets kick off the final season of alphabet dating with what we did for the second set of letters…
U is for Continue reading
Tokyo Fox (東京狐) 