Category: Japan
-
Sights from traveling northern Japan
In writing my newsletter I gathered up all the photos I posted this month from our summer break trip in Tohoku. I thought I should just post the photo round up here, and I can give a little a bit of context for the images. This trip was my first this far north. I had…
-
Driving Fukushima: The 3/11 nuclear disaster 12 years later
See the first part of this travelogue on Iwate and the tsunami Speeding along the highway along the gently curving coast of the Sendai plain, we enter the more hilly Fukushima Prefecture from its northernmost border. Immediately we are greeted with a new road sign: a sensor displaying the amount of radiation in microsieverts per…
-
Driving Iwate: The 3/11 tsunami 12 years later
3/11: the triple disaster in March of 2011 when the world’s fourth largest earthquake since 1900 caused a massive tsunami to ravage the northeastern coast of Japan, triggering three nuclear reactors to meltdown, the deaths of nearly 30,000 people, and displacement of nearly 300,000. Twelve years later 3/11 still weighs on all of Japan, but…
-
Maker Faire Kyoto 2023
Last March, while hanging out at the Engineer Cafe in Fukuoka I heard about the annual Maker Faire in Kyoto. Some of the Engineer Cafe folk planned on coming up to Kyoto to attend. I have never been to a Maker Faire before so I decided to join. After canvassing on the HN Kansai slack…
-
Tanegashima Island: A strategic casualty
The day we flew out of the “cosmoport” of Tanegashima, a remote island (ritō) off the southern coast of Kyushu, was actually historically significant. Not because of my presence of course.
-
Japan doubles its islands
A couple years ago, after moving to Ikijima, I introduced you all to the idea of ritō, or “remote island”. Being a “stratovolcanic archipelago” Japan has a lot more islands than you can likely name. In fact, there are 6,852 at the last official count. A few days ago, the Japan Times reported that the…
-
Saturday morning walks in Kyoto
In recent weeks, as the kids sleep in on the weekend, my wife and I have been taking early morning walks around the city, hitting temples and shrines before the tourists. We chitchat while strolling along, poking around areas of the city that we have not taken the time to explore. Sometimes we talk about…
-
Visiting the Kyoto State Guest House
A few years ago one of the members of Writers in Kyoto shared a broadcast from NHK’s Core Kyoto S05E02 Kyoto State Guest House: Hospitality Imbued with Beauty and Craftsmanship. This is a special compound located in the Kyoto Imperial Palace but run by the Cabinet Office. It is where the Japanese government receives foreign…
-
Minamiza
Took a walk up the Kamogawa tonight and saw Minamiza, the theatre where all the kabuki greats have been performing for the the past hundred years.
-
On Shijō this afternoon the Naginata-hoko is going up. Look at the rope work and the size of some of the posts! #gion #祇園祭 #kyoto