Hundred of burning torches moved as a river of flames advancing through the black near-moonless night. Under glowing torchlight a hundred samurai in full armor, sword at the hip, their faces and armor illuminated by only their burning fires proceeded…
This story begins not with a prison but a road. Hokkaido is Japan’s Alaska and Old West combined. In the 1800s this massive, harsh land was sparsely populated and rich in resources waiting to be exploited. Japan needed pioneers to…
We began this year with a trip to a place I’d never thought my sub-tropical wife would willingly visit in the dead of winter: Hokkaido. Hokkaido is Japan’s northernmost main island; its last domestic frontier. Previously known as Ezo, Japan…
If you travel to Katase-Enoshima station, near the beaches in southern Fujisawa, you might see the top of a pagoda peaking above the trees on a nearby hillside. Ryukoji is not a large temple, especially compared to the sprawling…
I found Haruhi Suzumiya. She’s working in a popular chain anime goods shop in Osaka’s Nippombashi district. I didn’t plan to find a god-like entity hocking over-priced character goods, but it just sort of worked out that way. Nippombashi has…
In the hills of Yokohama, not terribly far from the skyscrapers, shopping malls, and night life of Sakuraigicho and Kannai, there is a large hilltop park in a quiet neighborhood called Nogeyama. Large parks in Yokohama are not all that…