Shrines of Matsue
Matsue is a place with a lot of history, even by Japanese standards. That’s because Izumo, the main stage of Japan’s founding myths, is right next door. You could say it’s a bit like Gyeongju…
Matsue is a place with a lot of history, even by Japanese standards. That’s because Izumo, the main stage of Japan’s founding myths, is right next door. You could say it’s a bit like Gyeongju…
This week, like every week, I went off on a weekend trip. The theme this time was touring the nearby sights I hadn’t been to yet. The weather was gorgeous from the morning on. Pines at Yushien, a Japane…
After a night in Okayama, we head for Naoshima. The sea between Japan’s main island and Shikoku is called the Seto Inland Sea, and Naoshima is one of the countless islands in it. It’s an island fam…
Over the weekend I went to Okayama, about three hours by car from my place. Okayama started out as a fairly small town, but it became well known as a transport hub linking Kyushu, Chugoku and Shikoku with Toky…
Lately my photos haven’t been coming out the way I intend.. But it’s not that I don’t like them.. Hmm.. what am I supposed to do.. An old street An old street Woods, backlit.. Woods, a bit…
Even Matsue in Shimane Prefecture, where I live, has one restaurant that’s famous nationwide, so I went to check it out. (It took me six months of living here to find even one, sob.) The place is called …
I didn’t actually want to go to a Japanese restaurant in Korea, but around Gangnam the only places I knew that were cheap, had a nice atmosphere and served food worth eating were this one and Mokran in A…
This is Nolboo’s fairly well-known duck restaurant chain. There are branches all over the city, but the one I went to was in Sillim-dong. Just like the lamb place before it, I dropped in here to build up…
It’s summer and I was feeling a bit run-down, so I went looking for something restorative and ended up at Lamb House, a lamb specialty restaurant in Bangbae-dong. I ate plenty of eel in Japan, but it doe…
This is a naengmyeon place that’s fairly well known in Incheon. It’s not near any tourist spots, so the customers are mostly locals, but every summer it’s always packed and you have to wait q…
I’ve got a few bottles(!) of wine ready for this trip to Korea. Getting them ready meant digging through a mountain of info on French and Italian wines, plus wine retail listings in Japan and Korea. Alon…
The weather was nice for once, so I decided to go up a mountain near my place. It’s called Daisen. A shot from the road to Daisen. On the way I stopped by the Shoji Ueda Museum of Photography. He’…