A Stroll Around Tsuwano
Tsuwano is a town with a long history. Around here it’s also called “Little Kyoto,” and tourists come flocking every day. Sweetfish (ayu) was the main reason for the trip, but since I’d…
Tsuwano is a town with a long history. Around here it’s also called “Little Kyoto,” and tourists come flocking every day. Sweetfish (ayu) was the main reason for the trip, but since I’d…
This spring I had a truly wonderful ayu (sweetfish) dish at Acqua Pazza, an Italian place in Hiroo. It was so exquisite that it stayed on my mind for ages. So I went looking for a place in Japan that does ayu …
I dropped by Matsuya for a quick dinner. It’s a restaurant near the harbor that doubles as a guesthouse, and I came here once last winter for snow crab. This is how it looks at night.. They close early…
After my visit to Naniwa Sushi I got hooked on sushi for a while and went around the sushi places in town that are supposed to be famous. This was one of them, but it was just so-so for its reputation. It felt…
There’s a small sushi place near (?) where I live that caters to the locals. It’s a good spot I’ve wanted to introduce for a while, and this time I somehow got lucky and managed to bring my c…
This was my third visit to the Adachi Museum of Art. Having been there so often, the garden doesn’t move me the way it did the first time, but the artworks change every season, so there’s always so…
I’ve been to this place once before. It’s such great value for money that whenever I get a craving for meat, it’s where I end up without fail. Sukiyaki set for two Plenty of ingredients. S…
Ho Chi Minh City is much bigger than Hanoi, with about twice the population. With the legacy of the French colonial era still around, the streets and buildings are on the refined side. It’s more internat…
I went to Cu Chi, famous as a Viet Cong guerrilla base during the Vietnam War. It’s about two hours from Ho Chi Minh City. The road to Ha Long Bay was narrow and poorly paved, so it felt much farther tha…
Ha Long Bay has a large limestone cave. It’s a bit better than the ones in Okinawa, but not as good as Akiyoshidai. The bigger problem is that it’s terribly managed, so while it’s impressive,…
About three to four hours by car from Hanoi lies Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Apparently it’s famous for its stunning scenery. When I actually went, though, it didn’t look all that po…
Hanoi may be the capital of Vietnam, but it wasn’t as international or as urban as I’d expected. That said, there are a fair number of historic buildings. A pyramid, maybe.. This is where Vietna…