Meiji Restoration Ryoma Sakamoto: A Taste of Japan in Japan
Spend enough time in Japan and Sakamoto Ryoma finds you. He is on the poster in the history aisle of the bookshop, in the television…
Spend enough time in Japan and Sakamoto Ryoma finds you. He is on the poster in the history aisle of the bookshop, in the television…
If you have lived in Tokyo long enough, you have probably stood somewhere in the city and imagined its past. Picture a castle town, the…
Sooner or later, almost everyone who lives in Japan holds a ¥10,000 note and wonders about the face on it. You notice the serious expression…
Every long-term resident of Japan eventually asks the same question: how did this country change so fast? Somewhere between the bullet trains and the temple…
There is a particular afternoon in a Japanese summer when the cicadas sound louder than the traffic. Your shirt clings to your skin, and even…
Somewhere around your second winter in Japan, the pale lager you started with no longer feels like your only choice. The evenings grow shorter, and…
Somewhere in your second or third year in Japan, you start planning around the weather. A grey February in Tokyo might send you searching for…
At some point after settling in Japan, you stop buying only the beers you know and start noticing the cans you have never tried. One…
The first real heat wave of a Japanese summer teaches you something no guidebook mentions. The air feels like a wet towel, and all you…
Every long-term resident of Japan remembers the winter they stopped fighting the cold and started planning around it. The kotatsu comes out, evenings grow shorter,…