I was in Nagasaki earlier this month to see my daughter performing with her Cheerleading group at their university festival. While I was there I had the opportunity to visit a few shrines and temples and the one that most impressed me was Sōfukuji (崇福寺), a temple that was built for the [Read more…]
Last Tuesday was a national holiday (Labour Thanksgiving Day) in Japan and so I took the opportunity to go for a stroll up Mount Mitaki, one of the hidden gems on the outskirts of Hiroshima. The peak of Mount Mitaki is only around 350 metres high so it’s not too [Read more…]
This article about my experience of mahjong in Japan was first published on a now defunct blog back in 2001. From quite early on in my life I had wanted to learn to play mahjong. The teeming variety and exotic charm of the tiles fascinated me. When I accepted a [Read more…]
Tengu are mythical Japanese demon-gods (yokei) who live in remote forests and mountains of Japan. A typical Tengu has a red face with a long, somewhat obscene red nose. Tengu usually have bushy eyebrows and beards as well. The characters that make up the work Tengu mean “heaven” + “dog” [Read more…]
Title: Day Trip to Mihara Location: Hiroshima Prefecture Link out: Click here Description: A day trip to Mihara to visit Tim Buthod, go to a festival and various izakaya and bars… Date: 2012-05-26 The bullet train station at Mihara is built on the ruins of Mihara castle. On our way [Read more…]
We had a fine time of it in Kagoshima and Miyazaki. Here are some photos of our holiday. The first three were taken by Neil… sadly the rest, which I was hosting on Blue Melon, were lost when I failed to back them up and forgot to renew the subscription… [Read more…]
Yippee! We are off to Kagoshima and Miyazaki for our summer holidays in the second half of August! It will be our second visit to southern Kyushu in two years. Last summer we flew to Miyazaki from the good old Hiroshima Kannon airport, conveniently located in the south of Hiroshima [Read more…]
“I open my heart to myself like a sort of vitrine, and examine one by one all those love affairs of which the world can know nothing.” Charles Swann, in Cities of the Plain by Marcel Proust In his fascinating book, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of [Read more…]
A few months ago I was struck by the paucity of theatrical productions in Hiroshima and berated a few of my students on the matter. The pat answer was invariably “Ah, Japanese are very shy.” My protests don’t seem to have had much effect on the recreational habits of the million or so “shy” Hiroshimites, but they did land me a handful of free tickets for a kyogen performance on the noh stage at Aster Plaza towards the end of March.
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