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 …
I came on the blog today with the intent of posting a list of my favorite places to go in Tokyo for foliage – at least those that aren’t usually mobbed by crowds. Then a quick search made me realize that I’d written that post three years ago … and I still stand by the … Continue reading
A few weeks ago, Stonebridge Press sent me an advance copy of My Year of Dirt and Water: The Journal of a Zen Monk’s Wife in Japan by Tracy Franz. I’ve been fortunate to review a good many Japan-themed books on this blog over the years but never before have I been privileged to review the book … Continue reading
Iris gardens seem to be a dime a dozen in the Tokyo area but that doesn’t mean I love them any less. Purple being one of my favorite colors, I get a particular thrill to see these delicate-stalked blooms begin to appear in late May and throughout the month of June. Continue reading
For many, February is a frigid month, a month to just grit your teeth, zip up your jacket and trudge your way through a slog of icy, sleety days and cold weather. But February in Japan makes my heart sing. From bean throwing and daruma burning at the beginning of the month to the gorgeous … Continue reading
Hello all and a very belated happy new year! It’s sadly been a few months since I last wrote on this blog and I fear that pattern may not change much this year. Although I made several trips back to Japan in 2017, at the moment there are no planned trips on the schedule for 2018. It’s … Continue reading
October is here and the past weeks have flown – the start of school, a flurry of traveler itineraries, plans for the autumn pilgrimage “home” to Japan. (I can’t miss foliage season!) Meanwhile, the pile of books by my bedside table has continued to grow. This week, the stack finally reached a guilt-inducing height and … Continue reading
I haven’t done a Manhole Monday post in quite some time, so I took a cruise through my photo archives today to try to find a unique one. I stumbled across this colorful one from a trip to Niigata a few winters ago: I usually do a little write-up on the scene that graces each … Continue reading
