Where Globe-Trotting meets Beach-Combing
The black shell toward my face? Come, let me eat thee. I have thee not and yet I taste thee still. Clouds of sulfuric gas billowed up from the slopes of the Owakudani Valley, a remnant of the volcanic activity troubling the Hakone Mountains for the last 400,000 years. Signs warned that inhaling the gas…
“The Grand Torii of the Hakone Shrine standing in the Hakone Lake hears a tablet in the handwriting of exprime Minister Shigeru Yoshida who by signing the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 set the Japanese nation marching on the road of peace and democracy. In October 1964 the Hakone Shrine held a solemn prayer…
I get the news I need from the weather report…which said to expect windy conditions and below-freezing temperatures today for my and Chris’ first trip to Hakone. That seemed appropriate given the fact that one year ago we were freezing in Beijing. So we layered layered layered and were able to stay outside laughing and…
Would you like the house blueberry jam from Kyoto to go along with your scone? I love afternoon tea! I LOVE IT! And I love that there is a club in Tokyo to celebrate it. We joined this fun group for an afternoon Christmas tea party at the Lipton Tea House (1-3-1 Ginza, Chuo Ward…
Maybe because they stab you in the lip with the Novocaine needle by accident, making it bleed and leaving a scab, before filling the room with the smell of drilled tooth, followed by sticking some kind of dental pipe cleaner in your nerve socket and taking four x-rays, making you walk within view of the…
To clarify, I don’t like titles for people. Titles for books are ok. Anywho, everyone in Japan has business cards, mostly done up with English on one side and Japanese on the other—cool! Well it took me more than half a year to order any because I was intimidated by that big blank space under…
A certain amount of boredom is required to plan adventures, and now that we’ve been here long enough for schedules to fill up to bursting, boredom is a hot commodity. Fortunately, some cold, rainy weather this weekend and Chris’ need to study provided just enough idle leisure to concoct this plan for today: take the…
