There is sushi and there is design. And then there is designer sushi. There’s no better way to describe the beautiful seafood and vegetables on offer at the minimalist restaurant A-Womb. The eatery specializes in high quality, DIY hand-rolled sushi (temaki), featuring many local vegetables and unique food combinations not often found at your standard sushi joint.
How does one type a trumpet fanfare? Dun dun dun daaaaaaaaaaa, dun dun da dun dun daaaaaaaaaaaa. Hmmm, perhaps not.😛 Why the celebration? Glad you asked.😀 After over three years of blogging, I have arrived at the milestone 500th post!
Two years ago, I gave a quick profile on Sumiko Enbutsu’s tiny but fantastic guidebook A Flower Lover’s Guide to Tokyo. As we really swing into the spring flower season, I wanted to do the book a bit more justice and hopefully give garden lovers out there (like myself) an additional resource to track down some …
We’re coming to the meat of Golden Week right now, with Greenery Day (Midori-no-Hi) drawing to a close today. Tomorrow, May 5th, marks Children’s Day, one of the more visually exciting holidays of this period.
How is it that, given my acknowledged love of Japanese gardens, I rarely seem to write many up on this blog? Let’s change that, shall we?🙂 Today starts the first of my Great Gardens series, and no better spot to begin with than the currently blooming Kawachi Fujien.
Ahhh, it’s upon us. The most wonderful – and dreaded – time of the year. No, not Christmas. Not even Obon, the summer holiday that sees Japanese returning to their ancestral homes in droves. Rather, I am talking about Golden Week, the string of holidays that falls between April 29th and May 5th/6th.
Kurashiki is a lovely canal town in Okayama Prefecture that doesn’t always get the press it deserves. It has a beautiful neighborhood (the Bikan district) of old rice storehouses that have now been converted to shops, museums, restaurants and comfortable ryokan (traditional inns). Boats drift lazily down the central canal while willows on the bank …
During our trip to Tohoku earlier this month, we encountered shops and shops of kokeshi dolls. Kokeshi are wooden dolls with heads and bodies only, traditionally made only in the six northern prefectures of Japan’s Honshu Island.
Six years into my time here in Japan and I have to admit, I am leery of free tours. Granted, I am an “info junkie” and all around history nerd so I often feel that these tours, given by enthusiastic but somewhat unqualified guides, never seem to satisfy. Still, I’d been curious about the Tokyo …
I’m a total garden nerd. I don’t know how it happened, as we had more mint and parsley growing in our front yard garden than ornamental flowers. But for some reason, the palette of colors in the flower gardens here in Japan simply takes my breath away.
My daughter is a pretty easy-going traveler, but there is a limit to how many museums you can drag a toddler to. Sometimes you just have to build in a little bit of playground time. Luckily, there are some fantastic recreational areas scattered around the islands that will entertain adults almost as much as their …
October 1st is a great day to be in Tokyo. The city celebrates Tokyo Citizens’ Day by opening up numerous attractions to the public for free. If you’ve always wanted to see the capital’s best museums, zoos, aquariums and gardens, now’s your chance to do it for no charge. Continue reading
Autumn is in the air in Japan. Typhoon season has been pretty wet this year, I heard, but cool temperatures and clear skies are starting to make their appearance. The first foliage reports from japan-guide are out and Hokkaido has started off the season with brilliant colors. Last year, looking to vary things a bit … Continue reading
Courtney cooks up a tasty shiso salad in this month’s Washoku Wednesday column! Shiso, or perilla, is an herb that is often used in Japanese cuisine but isn’t well known in the western world. There are two varieties, green and (red) purple, but the uses are very different. Green is added to dishes, salads and more. … Continue reading
Back in the Edo Period (1603-1868), the city of Edo (now called Tokyo) became the de facto capital of Japan. While Kyoto remained the cultural capital, the administration of the Tokugawa Shiogun operated out of Edo. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun, had already unified much of Japan; his descendants strengthened the ties between the various … Continue reading
Back in my university years, one of my roommates convinced me one summer that we should enroll in a yoga class. At that time, yoga was not the massive lifestyle craze that it’s since become and I’d never personally taken the plunge. Our instructor was a 6 foot tall man with a soothing voice and … Continue reading
I’ve mentioned it before, but libraries are one of my favorite places. So of course, one of the first places I went in southern California was the library closest to my house. Sticking out at the end of one o the shelves was a title I had never actually come across before – Yuki and the … Continue reading
Ahhhh … that hiatus felt all too long and all too short! For those of you reading this, welcome back! Thanks for letting me take some time off. We’ve safely arrived in California, have even moved into a new (rental) home, and even started getting accustomed to driving on the right side of the road … Continue reading
