When I started to plan this trip to Niigata I was expecting to stay in the city centre but the high prices of hotels there meant that I had to look further afield. It was a blessing in disguise really as that meant I got to experience some Continue reading
For the last few years now, Star Wars has been all about the medium of TV with Disney Plus churning out shows at quite a rapid rate. In just the last 15 months or so there has been ‘The Book of Boba Fett‘, ‘Obi Wan Kenobi‘, ‘Andor‘, season two of ‘The Bad Batch‘ and the third season of ‘The Mandalorian‘. Presumably, the latter is Continue reading
The iconic Captain Tsubasa has appeared in various comic book magazines, cartoons and video games since its creation in 1981. It became one of the most memorable manga and anime worldwide, and really helped popularise football in Japan. Some of the footballers inspired by Tsubasa include Lionel Messi, Alessandro Del Piero, Fernando Torres, Zinedine Zidane, Hidetoshi Nakata, and Andrés Iniesta.
At the start of one of the stories, Tsubasa and his mum move to a fictional town in Shizuoka Prefecture called Nankatsu. Tsubasa ended up playing for a selection team called Nankatsu SC, consisting of the best players among the schools in the city. However, fiction turned into reality a Continue reading
The mid to late 1990s was my favourite era for music and I was lucky enough to have seen pretty much every band I wanted to (Oasis, Blur, The Verve, Shed Seven, Suede, Stereophonics, Manic Street Preachers, Cast, Ocean Colour Scene, Supergrass, Prodigy and many, many more) but there were a few notable ones that eluded me such as Pulp, Radiohead, Black Grape and Ash. Somehow, they just never seemed to be Continue reading
When it comes to ramen, there are many tastes and regional variations whether it be shio (salt), shoyu (soy sauce), tonkotsu (pork bone broth) in Kyushu or miso ramen which is served up in Hokkaido. On top of that come the crazy novelty ones which include things like cheese, coffee, ice-cream, tequila, kiwi, ham, lemon, pineapple, sake and so on. The kind of things that the true ramen masters would most definitely turn their nose up at!
Other than the soup itself the chashu meat and egg are two of my favourite parts of any ramen dish but how would I fare at eating vegetarian ramen without either of those ingredients? Continue reading
Each and every time the Olympics take place I often find myself watching a fair amount of table tennis. It’s not because I’m particularly interested in it but it’s just that the Japanese TV broadcasters seem to show it a lot. That’s probably not too surprising as there are a lot of very good players with Mima Ito and Jun Mizutani being the ones I remember the most from both the singles and the mixed doubles.
In my attempt to see a few sports I’ve never seen before I noticed the T.League Play Off Finals were taking place in Tokyo so booked a couple of tickets last month when it was only known that Continue reading
When I went to every station on Kawasaki’s industrial Tsurumi Line in one day a few years ago it was expected to be a one-off but on something of a whim I then decided to do likewise on another interesting train line in the same prefecture. This time it was the Enoshima Electric Railway (also known as the Enoden Line) in Kanagawa Prefecture where the iconic Continue reading
Until I started teaching in Japan I have to admit that I had never heard of this form of football, and I even thought the students were making mistakes and that futsal may have been a Japanese-English word. It’s relatively unknown back in the UK but is popular in the likes of Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Argentina and Japan.
Futsal has similarities to five-a-side football, and is something I’ve been meaning to go and experience for quite a few years now. The F. League is Japan’s top league for the sport, and having Continue reading
Times were very different in the late 2000s when I would pretty much go abroad every time I had at least four consecutive days off. Of the eight countries I visited in 2007, my trip to Palawan in the Philippines was perhaps the most enjoyable. Subsequently I decided to return to the country the following year to see a different island and my girlfriend-of-that-time joined me too for our first trip together.
Boracay island is considered to be the crown jewel of the country thanks to the beautiful White Beach on the west coast but we had to Continue reading
Like many people in Japan I was keen to see some domestic rugby on the back of the country hosting a successful World Cup in 2019. However, Covid_19 came along and a lot of the momentum for rugby’s growth was lost. With limited knowledge of the Top League, I decided back in late 2019 that I’d like to see Continue reading
Tokyo Fox (東京狐) 