Category: japan

kurobe alpen route bus tour

snow capped mountains with a hazy moon in a grey sky

Up bright and early -around 4:30am – we arrived at Shinjuku, ready for our bus to depart at 7am. We were off on a two-day bus tour to discover Kurobe Tateyama Alpine Route.

a doctor's office in a museum dedicated to the showa era
traditional shop
mitarashi dango held up
rice cake on a stick

First up, we stopped at Hida Takayama where we explored a museum dedicated to the Showa-era and sampled mitarashi-dango whilst basking in the traditional town streets. It was nice to see the sakura still blooming in the area – getting to see sakura is always a plus for me.

thatched roofed houses of Shirakawa-go
inside a house in the rafters in shirakawa-go
black sesame seed ice cream in a cone being held up
vanilla ice cream in a cone being held up
2 sticks of dango in a chestnut-miso sauce

Then we were on our way to Shirakawa-go to see the thatched houses. The village is open for ...

natsume soseki memorial museum tokyo, waseda, tokyo

  • Soseki street sign
  • Soseki museum sign

I love Natsume Soseki and there is a museum dedicated to him in Waseda, Natsume Soseki Memorial Museum, Tokyo. It’s built on the site where he used to live and it is a beautiful building inside.

Soseki museum entrance
  • Soseki cut out
  • Soseki bust
  • Soseki information plaque
  • Soseki museum layout
  • Soseki picture
  • Soseki walking map

Here’s a link to the walking map.

Soseki cafe with two coffees

There is also a cafe inside and I did like the coffee. We didn’t get any of the sweets because they were sold out of the 空也もなか but I don’t think we missed much.

veggie cafe, taco rice

For lunch we went to Cafe VG which is a veggie place and was lovely.

I was glad to visit the Soseki ...

a day in okutama

Happy belated Mountain Day! To celebrate, we went to Okutama・奥多摩 , Tokyo Prefecture. It took a bit over 2 hours to get there from over the other side of Tokyo, so we were up at 5:45 on a Saturday morning. We managed to get seats on the trains, which was my number one concern of the day and the trains are cool, so not a bad place to be in the middle of Japanese summer. When we arrived, they were gearing up for the festival, with stalls lining the streets but they weren’t open whilst we were there.

This month ...

climbing mt. fuji – 17th august 2018

So you want to climb Fujisan? You’re thinking, ‘I’m in Japan, it’s a great idea! A once in a lifetime opportunity’. Well I’m here to say, think again! Well, not really, it’s your life, but I’ll tell you what, I don’t have fond memories of my time spent on that mountain and if I could do it all again, I wouldn’t. I’d just go to station 5 and come home and be very content with that. If I haven’t put you off already, I encourage you to read on!

rental stuff

We rented our waterproofs and boots from here ...

pancakes at accueil

I went to Accueil in Ebisu for pancakes.  I had the banana and caramel sauce pancakes with vanilla ice cream, see above.  It was really nice and it was huge!  Me being the greedy sod I am at times asked for the regular size.  The waiter explained that size was for two-three people.  So, I’m not quite THAT greedy or brave to still go for that one, so I changed to the half size which I’m bloody glad I did because look at it!  I couldn’t eat it all and I was laughing so much when he brought it out ...