Kyoto alley cat
Browsing Category Japan
Relocating to Kyoto
Good afternoon from Vancouver International Airport. I am at Gate D70, about to board the plane. Yes, I just got back to Canada 3 weeks ago, but things… have been happening. In last month’s newsletter…
Unzen – Where foreigners go to hell to cool off
From a tiny speck on the horizon, the volcano slow grew as I crossed first the mud flats of Kumamoto and then the shallow waters of the Ariake Sea. Now, at the foot of the…
Living “with volcano” — a trip to Shimabara
The Shimabara Peninsula, a peninsula of a peninsula in Nagasaki prefecture, is just one of the fascinating places I travelled to in Kyushu, looking for “Kyushu Firsts.” This is where the “black samurai” Yasuke first…
Continuing a Japanese porcelain legacy — Review of The Art of Emptiness
In the mid-seventeenth century the nobles of Europe were thrown into an addiction crisis. With the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and the chaos that ensued, where were they to get fine porcelain to decorate…
Interviewing Superintendent Kubota
This month I was in Unseen Japan for a piece called How Schools on Remote Japanese Islands are Fighting Depopulation→ In that article I detail the genesis of the study abroad program my family and…
My year on Ikijima, a remote Japanese island
Between May 2020 and June 2021 I moved my family to the remote island (ritō 離島) of Ikijima. To find out why, check the FAQ. Three months after leaving Japan and returning to Canada, I…