Apple Curry, Hirosaki Castle & An Apt Pun-Based Name For The Local Japanese Idol Group!

Posted on September 17, 2018 by tokyofox

It wasn’t quite all local trains on this trip up north to the Tohoku area as I had to take a bus from Morioka Station to Hirosaki (3000 yen). The journey took about two hours and was the best way of getting between the two places as the train would’ve meant going on a huge detour heading eastwards, up round the coast to Aomori and then back down to Hirsosaki. Typically, the bus passed the same watermelon gas tank I’d just walked to on a two hour return trip. The fruit theme was to continue though as Hiroskai is Japan’s largest producer of apples and it’s certainly not shy about showing it!

  

There were a few things I wanted to do in Hirosaki but eating apple curry was my priority. This wasn’t an ordinary high street restaurant though as it’s located Continue reading →

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Dining Out: A Taste Of Jar Jar In Morioka (Iwate)

Posted on September 14, 2018 by tokyofox

There are three noodle dishes which Morioka is famous for. One of the most popular is the amusingly named wanko soba which come in small bowls and are consumed one after another until you’ve had enough. This has been covered by a countless number of YouTubers over the years and the record is an absurd 500 or so! The next one is called reimen which is a cold noodle dish with kimuchi in it that originates from Korea.

The final one is jajamen noodles which are udon noodles topped with cucumbers, garlic, chilli oil, and a sweet, miso meat sauce. This was the one I thought to be the more appetising and furthermore it had a name that was very similar to the much-ridiculed Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks. Unlike many people I never had a problem with his appearance in the Star Wars prequels and by pure chance I just happened to have a figure of the character in my bag ready to be whipped out for such a photo opportunity!!

  

The original jajamen restaurant is called  Continue reading →

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Only In Japan: A Huge Gas Tank Decorated To Look Like A Fruit!

Posted on September 11, 2018 by tokyofox

In any other country, such things like gas tanks would just be left in their natural state. However, that’s not always the way in Japan where some of the gas companies like to spruce them up a bit. Other decorated ones around the country (that I know of) include a football in Kiryū (Gunma prefecture), a peach in Akaiwa (Okayama prefecture), a smiley face mascot in Shibata (Niigata prefecture) and a few others have been garnished with artwork usually relating to the area they are based in. Click here to see a picture gallery of them all. 

Summer watermelons are the speciality of an area in Iwate prefecture called Takizawa and that is supposedly the reason why this gas tank has been decorated to look exactly like the big fruit. However, the two things are actually 100 kilometres apart! I’ve been told that there are two other watermelon tanks like this in Japan with Kumamoto and Tomisato in Chiba playing host to them.

  

Car is by far the best way to get to the gas tank but I chose to do it Continue reading →

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The Ancient City Of Hiraizumi In Iwate Prefecture

Posted on September 8, 2018 by tokyofox

As soon as I heard that Hiraizumi was known as an ancient city I was keen to visit it. If you’d mentioned that name to me a few days before I would have not been any wiser! Once I was done at the awesome Genbikei Gorge I took the bus five minutes up the road see this interesting shrine which is more commonly known as Takkoku no Iwaya.

In a country where there are thousands and thousands of shrines they need to really have some kind of uniqueness for them to appeal to me in some way. This one was a no-brainer though as a shrine built below an overhanging cliff isn’t something you see too often.

Continue reading →

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Dining Out: A Truly Novel Way Of Buying Food At Genbikei Gorge

Posted on September 5, 2018 by tokyofox

  

We tend to think of mistakes as bad things. Of course they are sometimes but naturally, we learn from them and in this case my silly error ultimately resulted in a very rewarding moment. This all happened at Genbikei Gorge which was the first place I went to on my arrival in the ancient city of Hiraizumi in Iwate prefecture that morning.

It is easy to confuse this gorge with the similarly-named Geibikei Gorge which is located close by and considered to be the more beautiful but is a bit more difficult to get to and seemingly looks very similar to Sandankyo in Hiroshima Prefecture. For me, Genbikei Gorge seemed like the more unique experience and it was also a much easier one as it was just Continue reading →

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A Trio Of Top Sights In The Aizu Wakamatsu Region

Posted on September 2, 2018 by tokyofox

Five weeks on from my last trip up north I headed that way again but there was to be a stop at Aizu Wakumatsu en-route to my nights accommodation in Sendai. It also happened to be my birthday and so, whilst my wife was working, I travelled up to Koriyama via Utsunomiya on my own. On that previous trip I ventured east on the Ban-Etsuto Line to see Mini Mount Fuji among other things but this time I headed west for an hour or so. I passed Inawashiro Station which was where my girlfriend (now my wife) and I went en-route to the wonderful Goshikinuma (Five Colour Lakes) back in 2012.

A few stops on from there was the tiny Higashi Nagahara Station and from there I walked for roughly thirty minutes to the Aizu Jibo Daikannon Statue. Being such a big statue it came into view much sooner than that which was a bit of a surprise as I had completely forgotten what kind of place I was going to as my notes on this area were made a few weeks ago.

 

It was a vast complex but I decided to just home in on the Continue reading →

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On The Trail Of Shin Godzilla #6 – Tokyo

Posted on August 30, 2018 by tokyofox

After a 12 year absence from Japan, ‘Shin Gojira‘ (2016) came out with shooting taking place in Tokyo from September 2015 onwards. Released 62 years after the original, it certainly pays homage to it with the inclusion of some classic Godzilla filming locations in the Japanese capital.

N.B. The time codes given are approximate and may be slightly different to the DVD or blu-ray versions.

It may seem like the first locale is in Shinagawa. The screen caption on 19 minutes even says that it’s Shinagawa Shrine but as I revealed in ‘On The Trail Of Shin Godzilla #1‘ this is movie magic for it wasn’t actually filmed there. Ichigaya Kamegaoka Hachimangu Shrine (below) is nearly ten kilometres to the north of Shinagawa and it doubles up as the place of worship where a crowd of people are seen running away from the atomic-breathed monster and climbing the shrine’s stone stairs. The address is 4-1 Ichigaya Honmura-cho, Shinjuku-ku. Ichigaya Station is just a few minutes walk away. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a few extra bonus shots of this nice shrine.

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On The Road With The Kashiwa Reysol Fans Twice In Five Days

Posted on August 27, 2018 by tokyofox

  

The majority of J1 games tend to be on Saturdays when I’m working but there are a few rounds played on Sundays. I got lucky with the Nagoya Grampus match being against my team Kashiwa Reysol on a Sunday in May and similarly Reysol were on the road at Jubilo Iwata on Sunday August 19th. Their Yamaha Stadium was the fourth and final stadium I wanted to visit in Shizuoka Prefecture following trips last year to Shimizu S-Pulse, Fujieda MYFC and Azul Claro Numazo.

This stadium only holds 15,165 seats so for the first time ever I actually bought a ticket in advance and went to stay at my parents-in-law’s place in Izu the night before. I spent the afternoon of the game checking out a few sights in nearby Hamamatsu and was at Iwata Station just before 5pm (two hours before kick off) where I soon managed to catch a bus to the stadium. It cost Continue reading →

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Tokyo Daytripper: Tokyo’s Newest Big Buddha Statue

Posted on August 24, 2018 by tokyofox

 

Move over Kamakura buddha as there’s now a bigger rival in this region and it’s actually in Tokyo! However, I don’t think Kamakura will have to worry too much about potential visitors flocking to see this relatively new buddha statue as it’s still located about 90 minutes away from Shinjuku in rural western Tokyo.

This copper alloy one has only been open to the public since April this year and has become quite the talking point in the town of Hinode! It was five years in the making and built at great cost (over Continue reading →

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Dining Out: The “Pie Ramen” Restaurant

Posted on August 22, 2018 by tokyofox

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, pizza, sake, pineapple and so on. The kind of things that the true ramen masters would most definitely turn their nose up at!

  

That intro was actually copy and pasted from earlier this year when I sampled blue ramen but it’s an opening paragraph that’s also apt for this post about a new wave of ramen which has recently started being served up in a trailer house restaurant in Tokyo. Earlier this month, on a ridiculously hot day (over 36 degrees celsius!) I stopped off at this place en-route to see Tokyo’s newest Continue reading →

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