I’ve been back in Taiwan for a few months now, and most of what I’ve put on the blog has been new & updated hiking content (see here). But obviously I’m not hiking every day (just once a week usually), so here’s a bunch of random photos of this &
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Blog Archives
Taipei hiking: a dozen views of Taipei 101
Apropos of nothing much, here’s a bunch of views of Taipei 101 all taken during hikes I’ve done in the 3 months since coming back to Taiwan. The weather’s generally cloudy here in spring so most of them weren’t taken on the best of days, but anyway you can see how well Taipei 101 serves as a reference point from the mountains all around the city.
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Life in Taipei: hiking updates
I recently came back to Taipei and have been getting some hiking in before the insane heat & humidity properly kicks in (already starting to do so).
Main focus has been to redo a bunch of hikes I did last time I was living here, when I didn’t have a camera and was using a beatup old iPhone 3 for most of my pics –
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Life in Taipei: the old city wall
Taipei was only founded in the late 1800s when Taiwan was part of the Qing Empire, and the city walls were pulled down a short time later in the early 1900s when Taiwan was part of the Japanese Empire. The Japanese administration did this to make way for the wide boulevards which are still there today,
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Teaching English in Japan
Note: this post isn’t about how to actually teach the English language – for that start by doing a TEFL course. This post deals with your options when applying for jobs teaching English in Japan.
Teaching English in Japan: with my boy Darin on our first day of training in Osaka.…
The Truth about 3.5 Years as a Struggling Digital Nomad
(This is a pretty depressing post to be honest, but if you’re where I was a few years ago, weighing up whether or not to go for it as a digital nomad full time travel blogger, you need to read this because it doesn’t always work out – for every successful blogger telling you to go for it,
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Sliding Doors
So recently I found myself back in a place I never wanted to visit again – heartbreak. Lovesick. Depressed and moping around, kicking myself for not making better decisions.
In any life you’re going to get those ‘sliding doors’ moments; do you go for the job opportunity in another city?
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A Local Shrine Combat Festival in Ikebukuro Honcho (Tokyo)
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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Photos of an Ultra-Nationalist March I Witnessed in Tokyo
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
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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The Owls of Ikebukuro
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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Damage to Kyoto’s Hiking Trails from Typhoon Jebi
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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A Dramatic Lightning Storm Over Bangkok
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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2018 updates
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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Broken Bones and Silver Linings
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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Life in Taipei: Stumpy the Lizard
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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Tokyo’s Controversial Yasukuni Shrine and Yushukan Museum
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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How to Take the Ferry to Hokkaido
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 Festival
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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An Ode to the Crows of Japan
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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