It is said that the only thing certain in life is death. The next world is one you supposedly should not miss, and this quirky little museum in Shizuoka Prefecture hopes to help you experience the world of the Japanese afterlife.
It’s located a short distance from Continue reading
This compilation post features my favourite Inari shrine from each of Tokyo’s 23 wards. It was admittedly slim pickings for some of the wards so certainly don’t expect to be impressed by all 23! Justifying my choice for each of them with explanations would not be too interesting and indeed would probably be quite repetitive. Basically, I like any shrine which is small, has a tunnel of red torii gates, some red flags or some prominent fox statues.
1. Inari Shrine, Itabashi-ku. More details here
2. Takeyoshi Inari Shrine, Continue reading
New Years Day signals new beginning but the Emperor’s Cup Final on January 1st usually brings the curtain down on the previous years domestic Japanese football season. However, this years semi-finals and final dates were much earlier due to the FIFA World Cup in Qatar taking place in the Winter. Presumably Japan National Stadium was booked out so Nissan Stadium in Yokohama was the venue for the final for the first time since 2014.
Against the odds, J2 team Ventforet Kofu overcame Kashima Antlers away from home in the semi final to make it to their first elite cup final. They were set to face Sanfrecce Hiroshima in the showpiece final and the fact that it was those two teams facing off against each other meant it was Continue reading
Kyoto Station pretty much marked the end of this whirlwind four day trip but it wasn’t the happiest of endings as the bullet trains were all delayed and so I had to wait for over an hour till they were running again. Still, it did give me some time to 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
Suzuka was very much the centre of attention for sport this afternoon with the most eye-catching event being Round 18 of the 2022 Formula One championship. However, 400 kilometres away the local football team, known as Suzuka Point-Getters, were playing a match against Shinjuku Criacao at the Japan National Stadium in Tokyo.
This stadium has been open for nearly three years now and I finally got to go inside it but not for a cup final or an international match! Teams occasionally decide to play a home match at the stadium (FC Tokyo and Shimizu S-Pulse have done so already this season) and this time the hosts were Continue reading
It’s been ten years since Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion. It was certainly a news story I didn’t see coming but I’ve never had any problem with the takeover although I really wasn’t so keen for the films to continue beyond Episode VI. As someone who remembers the lean years when there was barely any new Star Wars content out there, it has been wonderful to have a constant flow of films and TV shows released. To date, there has been the three sequel movies, two stand-alone films, Rebels, Resistance, The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, The Mandalorian, Visions, The Book of Boba Fett, Andor and more!
To celebrate the last decade I have Continue reading
Japan has many symbols of luck and good fortunes such as the maneki neko cat figurines, omamori (protective amulets) and omikuji (paper fortunes) but one of the more interesting ones is the tumbling doll known as daruma. Having been to a few daruma-related places in the last few years it was hard to resist the opportunity to see another when it was so nearby to where I was.
Having ventured over to the west side of Izu and met up with my friend Natasha back in August we spent a day Continue reading
Learning recently that there were only seven suspended railways operating in the world was a surprise, and hearing that two of them were in Japan was something I didn’t expect either. Some of this information came off the back of watching a Tim Traveller YouTube video (You can watch it at the foot of this post) about a dangletrain in Düsseldorf in Germany.
The two Japanese upside-down trains are both in reasonable close vicinity to Tokyo with one in Continue reading
It’s said that New York is the true home of cinema with hundreds and hundreds of movies being filmed there each and every year so a decade ago I thought it was time I try and cover a selected handful of shooting locations from the Big Apple.
On a 5 day trip to the USA I managed to cover movie locations from such films as ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s‘ (1961), ‘The Bourne Supremacy‘ (2004), Continue reading
Tokyo Fox (東京狐) 