One day in February, with the weather warming up a bit, I took a quick trip to Kobe. Strolling through cute, stylish streets and indulging in sweets would surely blow away all the stress piled up from overwork…
The town where I live is famous for crab. Well.. probably because it faces the East Sea (the Sea of Japan)? I’d been thinking about going to a crab specialist once before winter ended, and then I heard a…
Capricciosa is an Italian restaurant chain that’s famous all over Japan. Unless it’s a family restaurant that just microwaves everything, even a chain will vary a bit from branch to branch. Beef-bo…
The Oki Islands are the part of Japan closest to Korea. I think I heard they’re closer to Dokdo than Ulleungdo is.. something like that. I went there once for fun a while back, but it’s such a quie…
The garden at the Adachi Museum of Art, which an American garden magazine picks as the best garden in the world every year, is said to look its finest after a snowfall, so this winter I made up my mind and wen…
I think this is my first post in almost three months since the one in early January. I really haven’t been active for a long time. If anyone was waiting for my blog to come back – probably no one, …
My schedule on this Tokyo trip was tight right up to the end, so there was just no time for a proper meal. It was already mealtime when I got on the Shinkansen, and since they don’t sell a decent bento o…
In Japan, lots of shops sell something called fukubukuro at the start of the year, which you could translate as “lucky bags.” They stuff a paper bag with all kinds of things and sell it for around …
I took advantage of the New Year holidays to pop over to Tokyo for a bit. I was planning to see friends I hadn’t seen in a while, do some shopping and hit some good restaurants, but almost every place wo…
It was a short trip, but here are photos of the places I dropped into in Osaka. Rikuro Ojisan’s cheesecake Rikuro Ojisan’s cheesecakes always have a long line, but you can also eat one right away …
Lotus root tempura Nice and crisp. It’s not quite the skill of a top tempura house, but every dish is good. By this point I think I get this place’s style: I’d call it casual kaiseki that us…
I’d heard there was a pretty good Japanese restaurant in Shinsaibashi, the heart of Osaka’s nightlife — think Kabukicho in Tokyo — so I went to check it out. It had been a while since I’d see…