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’…
Driving home on the expressway from Kanazawa, I ended up passing through Kyoto. I had a bit of time, so I decided to wander around the city for a while. After circling downtown a few times, I stopped at a book…
I got into Kanazawa late the night before, found a place to stay, and was out walking around from the morning. Kanazawa has a simple layout, with the main sights lined up more or less in a straight line. You j…
The 17th was Marine Day, a public holiday in Japan too. It was a rare three-day weekend, so I just hit the road with no plan at all. The destination was Kanazawa, about 500 km away. That’s roughly Seoul …
I went to the Adachi Museum of Art, one of the few tourist attractions in Shimane Prefecture, where I live. It shows modern Japanese artworks gathered by a private collector named Adachi, and the quality of th…
On the morning of day two I met up with a friend who lives in Tokyo, for the first time in ages. We were both so busy that morning was the only time we could meet, so we decided to drop into a hotel nearby and…
At noon on day one I arrived at the Chisun Hotel, a business hotel in Hamamatsucho, Tokyo. It’s close to Haneda Airport and cheap too, so I saw plenty of Korean guests. I didn’t have time to go any…