Changing trains on Tokyo’s Subway system can be a little hectic and stressful at the best of times so imagine what it’d be like to do it multiple times in the name of “fun”! Well as you can imagine that is exactly what I did. There are 13 main Metro and Toei Lines in Tokyo (the pedantic may be outraged that I have Continue reading
There has been some debate in recent years about whether having a 55 year old playing in the J-League is good publicity for football in Japan or whether it makes people take it less seriously! The question of him playing and perhaps “devaluing the league” has been a little less in question this season though as Continue reading
My visits to Osaka seem to be getting shorter and shorter each time I venture into Japan’s third biggest city. This time I didn’t even spend the night there and was in the area for only seven hours or so. It proved to be a fairly meticulously planned schedule as I ticked off about half a dozen things that I wanted to do.
The morning had began very early down in Continue reading
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: Snail Slide
Location: Continue reading
This was the middle part of my trilogy of quirky musuems in the Yoshioka area of Gunma Prefecture, and the most normal of the three if a mix of toys, dolls, cars and pop-art can be considered such a thing!
It was a 15 minute walk up the road from the Life & Sex Museum to what looked like a very 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: Continue reading
It has become something of a tradition in recent years to have an annual meeting or two with former colleague George. The majority of our meet-ups have been food related (train themed curry, happy rainbow ramen etc), and this one was too but after we’d had lunch at the unique cafe between the train tracks in Akihabara we took the Metro to Akebonebashi Station on the Shinjuku Line for something more adventurous.
There were a couple of Continue reading
#21. Setagaya
Cycling may be something that I love to do but I’m not really one who goes for a ride without some kind of aim whether it be to a restaurant, a sight or just my workplace. With that in mind, and desperate to get out on my new bike, I decided to cycle round ALL the Inari Shrines in Tokyo taking each of the 23 wards one at a time.
Inspired by recent interest in tiny shrines, this idea seemed like a good way of Continue reading
Despite my lack of enthusiasm for much of this film it has served me well and the ‘Tokyo Filming Locations‘ post on it actually used to get a few hundred hits on a daily basis for many years. As is the way though, someone came along and did a much better job which is not so hard really as I thought my post was fairly average at best! That post now gets very little in the way of clicks!
The Tokyo locations rightly get all the acclaim and attention but it is perhaps forgotten that Continue reading
When I heard this idea on the radio a few years ago I thought it might be something that I could try as a way of motivating myself to go to some places with my wife that I’m usually not too interested in. I did think of suggesting it to her and then taking it in turns to come up with things to do for each letter but I thought she would dismiss it as a silly idea straight away so decided to keep it secret.
If you haven’t seen part 1 (A-E) then please click here to read that
The rules are quite simple. Do something for each letter going in alphabetical order. It would be quite easy to do an A-Z of dining out experiences so I decided that should be limited to Continue reading
Tokyo Fox (東京狐) 