So one Sunday afternoon a few years ago while living in the Ikebukuro Honcho district of Tokyo my hungover ass was woken up far earlier than intended by the sound of drumming and rhythmic shouting coming along the street:
A parade was coming my way,
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When I was living in Tokyo a few years ago I sometimes used to walk half an hour from my place down to Ikebukuro if I needed to do a little shopping or whatever. On one occasion as I got near the station area I could hear a crowd calling in response to an amplified voice,
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Koyasan is a large temple complex in the mountains of Wakayama, located not far south of Osaka. It works well as a day trip from Osaka and is a great option if you’ve already been to Kyoto and Nara and want to check something else out. It’s also a popular place to stay overnight (temple stays are available),
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A few years ago I was living in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district while teaching English a few miles away in Shinjuku. Ikebukuro is written 池袋, and the second character bukuro happens to sound very close in pronunciation to the Japanese word for owl fukurō. The entire district has taken this little linguistic coincidence to heart and adopted the owl as its symbol –
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On my recent visit to Japan (researching my new website Rugby Guide Japan for the Rugby World Cup) I spent a day in Kyoto doing a couple of hikes so I could update the crappy photography on those pages (namely, the Shogunzuka and Kami Daigo hikes).
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Having only just recently gained access to all the photos on the hard drive from my old broken laptop, I’m finally getting loads of old travel pics up on the blog.
Here’s the view from the window of a cheap hotel I stayed at for a month in Bangkok (on Soi Rambuttri round the corner from Khao San Road) a few years back:
It was rainy season and one night we had this spectacular display of lightning.
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It’s been a couple of years now since I launched this blog, yet I’ve been so busy catching up on writing posts from many years of earlier travel that I’ve largely failed to write posts updating where I actually am and what I’m actually doing. So with that in mind,
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Famous last words:
“Okay, last run and then I’m off to get some dumplings and catch the bus.”
I was talking to my riding pal Lilly, we were stood at the top of the terrain park at Welli Hilli Park,
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Fucking bugs. Fucking cockroaches, fucking flies, and fucking, fucking, fucking mosquitoes; one thing you’re always going to have to put up with if you go live in the Far East is all the damn bugs.
If you’re in Korea or Japan then at least it’s only a summer thing,
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This isn’t a politics blog. But when I travel I like to learn about the history of the places I visit, and to at least somewhat get a handle on the political landscape. Fact is that politics & history are closely intertwined, and if you travel without paying any attention whatsoever to those things you’re travelling with your eyes half shut.
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Most visitors to Hokkaido fly in, but to do it overland you have two options – bullet train or ferry.
If you have the JR Pass, the train’s the way to go – with the bullet train having recently been extended from Aomori through the Seikan Tunnel to Hakodate,
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The Gion Matsuri is foremost among the 3 great matsuri (festivals) of Kyoto (the others are the Aoi Matsuri and Jidai Matsuri), as well as being recognised as one of the 3 great festivals of Japan (along with Tokyo’s Kanda Matsuri and Osaka’s Tenjin Matsuri).
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One time while living in Kyoto… “I went for a midnight stroll around Mt Inari, the red gates picked out against the snow, and with the sounds of the city muffled to nothingness, the night deathly quiet and utterly still save for the flakes tumbling silently down,
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So there I was in Nanjing Station to catch the bullet train back to Shanghai, minding my own business, and going for a quick slash before boarding the train as you do.
It was one of those massive toilets in those massive train stations, the urinal room with 20-odd urinals lined along the walls,
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I was just sorting through some old travel photos after finally gaining access to the hard drive from my broken old laptop, and realised I’d never posted about the Yunnan backpacker trail in Southwest China. The basic route goes from the sprawling provincial capital Kunming up to the ancient lakeside town of Dali,
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「僕の言葉わかるでしょう」
“Boku no kotoba wakaru deshou!”
“You understand my words, don’t you?”
It wasn’t a question, more an accusation, and he delivered it in a point blank yell with a thump of the desk for emphasis.
They were literally playing the good cop bad cop routine,
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I didn’t feel the Earth move at 2:46pm on that day in early 2011, but I remember exactly where I was when it did; I was just finishing up my last lesson before lunch, a lunch break I’d be mostly wasting rushing out to buy white chocolates for my female coworkers (for White Day,
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Tohoku, 東北 (literal meaning ‘Northeast’) is the northernmost region of Japan’s main Honshu island, consisting of 6 large but relatively sparsely populated prefectures of great natural beauty. It also has a rich folklore tradition and many sites of historical importance, with a recent marketing campaign branding the region –
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For something a little different the Shimokita Peninsula at the northern tip of Japan’s main Honshu island fits the bill. The peninsula’s northern end is formed by the volcano Osorezan, which translates as Mt Fear or Mt Dread. Lake Usori, the caldera lake in the volcano’s crater,
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Yamadera literally means ‘Mountain Temple’, and that’s exactly what Yamadera is. The full name is Risshakuji (立石寺, Standing Stone Temple), but Yamadera’s far more commonly used. Some 1200 years old, it’s one of the coolest temples to visit in all Japan with an upper area accessed via a steep half-hour climb up the mountain.
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