Aburaya Maniwa

We had booked ourselves into an ryokan for the night on the shores of lake Togo, which is near the town of Kurayoshi, however as we could only check-in at 3pm, we decided to make a stop at the Adachi Museum of Art and Japanese garden. This attraction was recommended to us by our host the previous night, and the pictures on the flyer looked good....

We climbed the extinct volcano of Daisen today. Nearly 3 hours up and a punishing 2 hours down. Sadly it was very misty and drizzley so we saw very little except a few pleasant locals that we passed on the way. I don't think they get very many foreigners in these parts. Legs hurt now.

Visit a Japanese city with an incredible history, cuisine, art, natural beauty, friendly people and a proud tradition ... and you'll be in Kyoto. A four-day stay in this wonderful city is not enough, but it's a start to getting a feel for Old Japan, of samurais and geisha, of castles, of temples and gardens around every corner, of food that is a...

I sit here and write this while munching on rice. Yep, I must be in Japan. Rice is a big snack, or meal item, for me here. Might not even have considered it a snack before. Man, the past seven months have flown by. I've started to settle into my job, my neighborhood, making more friends, learning new words. How to recap seven months in a distant...

I went to see the classic Shakespeare play "Hamlet" on Friday at a small theater in Tokyo's Roppongi district. The theater seats about 300. I sat in the fourth row, seat No. 4. My friend Nozomi, a pretty dance instructor, had a small role in the play as one of the dancers and extras, but she had a few strong, harsh lines, too. All the dialogue w...

Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters manager Trey Hillman was named the Foreign Sports Figure of 2006 by the Foreign Sportswriters Association of Japan. So how did he act during the dinner in his honor a few days ago? He was gracious, answering every question thoroughly, often weaving in small tales of other baseball figures he thought of, or stories th...

Walking up several flights of stairs, two pals commented on this the other night. One said, "Man it was the Fifth Dimension way down there." The other added, "Yeah, it was almost like another world -- seven flights of stairs." Now, really, as I heard this it seemed just as if a scene from a movie crash-landed a few feet in front of me as I made ...

Sometimes returning from a superb trip just takes your mind on a peculiar roller-coaster. You go from seeing so many new, interesting things to returning to the same routine. *** I spent the weekend in Okinawa, about 1,000 miles south of Tokyo. To call the main island beautiful would be an understatement as big as the horizon. I attended the BJ-...

Just had a cup of green tea, ocha. Mmm ... good. So maybe next time I'll want a snack to go with it, eh? A good place to go would be a nearby pastry shop, okashiya. Today's little word play gives us these similarities: okashiya and okashina (ridiculous). Of course, in English these words don't sound anything alike, but to the untrained ear for J...

I'm in one of those semi-philosophical/contemplative moods, so here goes. Tokyo is ... Something new to see every day. A mecca for retro styles (low top Converse sneakers, for instance, are a big fad here, as well as tall leather boots for the ladies). An insomniac's oasis. *** What's the same half a world away? Well, a bird's chirping sounds th...