sweltering in the hot hiroshima heat: day two (Rivers Cuomo)

It was a breakfast buffet at the hotel with plenty of options! I tend to not have much of an appetite in the summer but my husband isn’t like that, maybe because he grew up with the heat.

After breakfast we got the bus to Shukkeien Garden・縮景園 which I loved. I love gardens anyway but I think this was one of the best I’ve been to in Japan. It was blistering heat and not very crowded. There were lots of turtles and koi in the pond and I felt sorry for them with the heat. Animals have done nothing to ...

golden week 2023

昭和の日 290423

I cleaned and did homework today. I have a Japanese lesson each week where (at the moment) I review N1 vocab and then read a couple of newspaper articles with my teacher. Then for homework, I review and Anki words I don’t know. Last week we read about exchange students and difficulties getting jobs with regards to Japanese language ability and then about ChatGPT and concerns unis have about it.

憲法記念日 030523

A beautiful spring day in Tokyo reaching 22ºC. We stayed local this year and today was really local. We enjoyed the new greenery that’s sprouted up ...

weekend 250223・260223

土曜日

I met my husband at Akihabara this weekend after he’d been out and about in the morning. I wanted to eat at Komaki Shokudo, so that’s what we did. We’ve eaten there before but it was a bit different this time. We both opted for the こまき定食 and it was really good. It’s just under ¥2,000, so a bit pricey but it’s a quiet spot, you feel like you’re doing your body some good and it’s vegan.

There’s a really nice shop called Chabara in the same bit and it has goods from all over Japan with very ...

cloudy october day in Koishikawa Botanical Garden 小石川植物園

posters advertising the Koishikawa Botanical Festival

Autumn in Tokyo this year feels a bit like autumn in Manchester. It’s been cloudy and rainy and cold when it’s usually blue skies with streaming, warm sun. What’s happening?

This Saturday we went to Koishikawa Botanical Garden in Bunkyo-ku. Wed never been before and I was surprised with how wild it was – normally a lot of gardens and parks here are either highly manicured spaces or just grass. It felt like an English park. It was quite busy in the main bit of the park, but if you went off exploring, you could find pockets of solitude. It ...

Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art in Chiba in summer

As it was the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this summer, Marine Day and Sports Day were put together to form ‘Mega Weekend’. This was not its official title but it meant that in Japan we got Thurs 22nd, Fri 23rd, Sat 24th and Sun 25th off (unless you work in one of the many places that didn’t).

We decided to go to Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art in Sakura, Chiba. It was a reservation system and they were quite strict on only allowing people in at their stated times. They have a free shuttle bus from both Keisei Sakura and ...