With the Black Ships Festival just around the corner, Rob Gilhooly drops in on the historical port town of Shimoda. “Ah! The moon is up, and tomorrow we’ll be in Shimoda,” said the little dancer. “I love Shimoda.” There’s much to love about today’s Shimoda, though not necessarily what Kaoru, the little dancer and central…

By the time the lunch gong had sounded in the great hall of the Heng Yang monastery, I had already placed generous votive offerings at a shrine in the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, watched a flour doll and knot-maker at work, witnessed minor grievances being aired at the Ancient Courthouse and met a…

“Where are you from,” she asked. I thought about where I was from and lit a cigarette. That place colored by associations with tattoos, the jabisen, and ways as strange as ornamental designs. “Very far away,” I answered. A Conversation, Yamanokuchi Baku.  Once a place natives of these islands were reluctant to claim as their…

Rob Gilhooly explores a 14-billion-ton block of salt in the middle of South America. Had it been part of some bizarre dream, it might have been more credible. After hours of driving along unsealed tracks that snaked through windswept villages straight out of a Sergio Leone movie, we entered what looked like a vast, open-air…

In the first half of 2020, the number of foreign visitors to Japan decreased suddenly due to the spread of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) infection worldwide, which has seriously impacted the travel industry around the world. What will happen to the Olympic and Paralympic Games that have now been postponed to next year?   Development…

Soon the Autumn holiday season will be upon us. However the “Go To Travel” campaign is not applicable to residents of Tokyo and travelling has been made difficult due to COVID-19. But for those residents stuck in the city but dying for a holiday, we have good news. Introducing the limited luxury hotel deals exclusive…

A popular Japanese outdoor pastime offers participants the chance to get well and truly off the beaten track, writes Robert Cameron. It’s summer – time to hit the streams for some sawanobori.  This popular and uniquely Japanese sport, sometimes translated as stream-climbing or river-tracing, is virtually unknown outside of Japan, but is extremely popular here….

In amongst a sprinkling of dots in the Pacific Ocean is a sub-tropical island whose ivory shores will lead the insouciant, this July, to secluded emerald-green coves which, as the sun bids its daily adieu, transform into inlets of fire – epitomizing the warmth, vibrancy, depth and serenity of all that is Okinawa. MOTHER TONGUE…

“Try to imagine Venice or Florence transported to the tropics and left for 50 years without a single coat of paint, a tightened screw, a roof tile replaced.”　Havana Run, Les Standiford The fishermen along the Malecon didn’t seem to be having much luck. “Turismo,” they said, neither resenting the word nor endorsing it, was ruining…

“The whole countryside was full of snakes sunning themselves along the roads and swimming in the ditches and newly flooded rice-fields… Out in Sesshu’s old garden behind the temple, the pond was starred with tiny twinkling water-lilies.”     Japanese Scrapbook, Glenn Shaw As notorious for their eulogies of places as they are for dampening the…