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
Off the back of my second time to cycle around all the Yamanote Line stations the natural follow-up was the A-Z of Tokyo Subway stations as that is what I did after my initial Yamanote circuit. Talk about recycling ideas! I did a cycle ride of A-Z stations back in 2010 but that included stations on any train lines in the capital city. This one though was restricted to the Tokyo Subway only which includes Metro and Toei line stations. I left my bike at home this time and did it in the more conventional way with the idea being to pass through one station for each letter.
There may be 26 letters in the English alphabet but Continue reading
It should probably be no surprise that the majority of this list are related to WWII given the time period of filming. To be honest, I’m not a fan of most of the films in this post so it really is the best of a bad bunch. There are a couple of movies from this era I just cannot get hold of but hopefully I’ve been fairly extensive with the rest. No doubt one or two others have also slipped my attention though so let me know! The tension is probably killing you so lets get started as we count down to the all-important number one at the bottom of this post…
Bonus: Blood On Continue reading
