Travelling in Japan: Books & Bookshops

“As in China, the Japanese literati were an unstable combination of two opposites – Confucian scholar and free-minded Taoist – so they tended to lean to one side or the other. Beian and Bosai represent the two poles. Beian was a strict moralist who refused to teach dubious people like geisha or Kabuki actors, and […]

Travelling in Japan: Tokyo

“Tokyo offers a lot of spectacle and confusion. This is just a facade. Behind the neon glare lies a steady rhythmic and miraculous everyday world that can be yours if you want it to be.”  Tokyo Totem We walked Tokyo for a week in an attempt to make it “ours”. The weather was good, around […]

Travelling in Japan: Kinosaki Onsen

We only had three weeks of our month in Japan planned with accommodation booked. This gave us the freedom to use our JR Passes flexibly in where we went. The idea was to chat with Japanese people about where we might like to explore and see what emerged that we may not have found back […]

Travelling in Japan: Ibusuki and Kagoshima

The longhaul train trip to Ibusuki, south of Kagoshima, was relaxing and offered great scenery with the opportunity to read for long stretches uninterrupted. We had no real reason for travelling to this small seaside town other than it was about as far south as we could go and there were potentially interesting onsen experiences. […]

Travelling in Japan: Osaka & Himeji

“Welcome to Osaka. Few major cities of the developed world could match Osaka for the overall unattractiveness of its cityscape, which consists mostly of a jumble of cube-like buildings and a web of expressways and cement-walled canals. There are few skyscrapers, even fewer museums and, other than Osaka Castle, almost no historical sites. Yet Osaka […]

Travelling in Japan: Hirosaki

Hirosaki is singularly the most Japanese city I know. Will Ferguson We stayed in Hirosaki not because I can’t read Japanese train timetables at all well but because sometimes Hyperdia is wrong (said the JR ticket office assistant). However, it proved to be a most serendipitous visit. The heavy snow that had descended on us at Hakodate […]

Travelling in Japan: Hokkaido

Japan is not a small country; no matter what the Japanese themselves may think. The main island of Honshu alone is larger than Great Britain. Were Japan in Europe, it would dominate the continent. Japan is larger than Italy, larger than Norway, larger than Germany…on a map Japan looks small because it is surrounded by […]

Travelling in Japan (Part III): Reflections and Highlights

“What must be admitted, very painfully, is that this was a disaster made in Japan…Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience, our reluctance to question authority, our devotion to ‘sticking to the program,’ our groupism, our insularity.”            Source I studied […]

Travelling in Japan (Part I)

Japan Please indulge my musings about our travels for a few posts during January. My family has arrived for three weeks in wintry Japan during our summer holidays. We are currently exploring Tokyo and surrounds with the assistance of a JR Pass and some very generous Japanese volunteers. Already, after less than a week in the metropolis we […]