Many of the parks and children’s playgrounds in Japan, particularly in Tokyo, are quite poor compared to other countries in terms of space, surroundings and a lack of grass. However, a handful of them do tend to possess extremely creative structures and they will be explored in this series.
Nickname: Dinosaur Park (Kyoryu Hiroba)
Location: Continue reading
In 2023 I went to 20 football matches in Japan and I’ve already matched that with less than two thirds of 2024 gone. I guess 30 is now the aim for this year so there will be a part 3 in a few months time. This second compilation features a total of eight different grounds in six prefectures including five I’d Continue reading
On the face of it these buildings might not be essential stops on any tour of Japan but if you happen to be in the vicinity then they are well worth a quick detour. The majority of this post will be about the first one as that was new to me whereas the other two have featured on Tokyo Fox before and are basically bonus extras deserving of (more) recognition again. The three unique buildings that I’ve come face to face with are as follows…
1. Sharekobe Museum, Hyogo Prefecture – Getting to see the inside of this Continue reading
This year has seen three Premier League clubs make their way over from the UK for one or two games each. Brighton have a big-name Japanese player in their side so that made sense. Spurs are considered one of the big six teams in England and have a Korean superstar player who seems very popular in Japan. As for Newcastle, well I’m really not sure about their appeal over here so there was only one way to find out.
Their main connection to Japan is their 2018 signing Yoshinori Muto but his departure in 2021 brought about a Continue reading
Think of train stations in Japan and the mighty Shinjuku station is sure to come to mind for many people. That is the world’s busiest train station, and Japan monopolises the top 50 list with only five of them not in this country. However, at the other end of the scale are some tiny stations which are usually unstaffed and used by very few commuters.
Station: Hozukyō
Prefecture: Continue reading
The summer break in the Japanese football season is a time when some fly-by-nighter European teams like to come into Japan to play some games and try and steal some money off punters in the country. Not my words but those of J-Talk Podcast host Ben Maxwell. I do actually agree with him on the whole, and do make light of such money spinning friendly matches…..but after slagging them off I then inevitably end up going to one or two!
Three English teams are in Japan this summer for a total of Continue reading
Despite living in England for the first 23 years of my life, my travels to other European countries were actually quite limited and indeed I had only been to France, Portugal and Sweden before moving to Japan. Italy was always a country I was interested in for the usual reasons like the food and the famous Roman architecture. However, it has to be said that going to Italy was very much the warm-up act for a trip to North Africa. As I needed a transit in Rome, I decided to take advantage of this and so spent a few nights in the Italian capital.
Having arrived the previous night on a long 14 hour flight, I was up early the following morning (Wednesday 5th August) but just missed my Continue reading
If you’re lucky enough to live in or close to a host Olympic city then there’s a strong chance you’ll get swept up by the hysteria surrounding the sale of tickets. For the last Olympics in Tokyo, local residents were allowed to apply for a maximum of 30 tickets across as many sports as they wanted. Whilst I applied for some pairs of tickets I thought (in a very selfish way!) that I would increase my chances of winning in the ballot by just trying to get single tickets.
I can’t remember exactly but I tried to get tickets for about Continue reading
The world is about to bestow a lot of attention on the city of Paris as it hosts the 2024 Olympic games. Its most famous sight, the iconic Eiffel Tower will no doubt be an ever-present feature in the background of live TV presentation as well as some of the sports themselves. The 330 metre tower was designed by Gustave Eiffel for the Paris Expo in 1889 and it was the inspiration for the construction of Tokyo Tower in 1958. Is it the only tower in Japan that was inspired by the one in France though? No, there is another!!
Paris lies about 9,700 kilometres away from Tokyo but there’s no need to go that far when one is located in Continue reading
Having begun in early 2006, the Tokyo Fox blog has reached its 2000th post * and is slowly but surely edging its way towards two decades of top quality fairly average content. Or is it? Will it even make it to the 20th anniversary?
In the modern day, blogging is all a bit old-fashioned but 18 years ago was a very different time when social media and YouTubers weren’t really around or as prevailant as today. This blog started off as a fun pun-based place to Continue reading
