IJT Japan NewsCheck out these great T-shirts from Uniqlo. The company will donate approximately 100 million yen (£750,000) from the sales of these T-shirts to the Japanese Red Cross who are helping recovery efforts in Tohoku.
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: kushikatsu, essential honshu, july 2011 japan, tsutenkaku tower | 6 Comments »
On my recent trip to southern Japan I had the pleasure of visiting Suizenji Park. Located in Kumamoto, a green and verdant city in western Kyushu, I found Suizenji to be a real gem of a place that I wholeheartedly recommend a visit to. Built by the Hosakawa family in the 17th century, it reproduces [...]
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箸 hashi = chopsticks 割り箸 waribashi = disposable chopsticks Packets and packets of disposable chopsticks Here’s a shocking statistic: Japan gets through 24 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks (waribashi) a year. That’s 185 pairs per person. This amounts to A LOT of wood, causing huge deforestation problems, mostly in neighbouring countries such as China.
Filed under: Culture, Opinion, Travel Advice, Uncategorized | Tagged: 'eating in Japan', chopsticks, Japan | 3 Comments »
I am currently lucky enough to be in Japan (Osaka as of right now) on a FAM trip organised by the Japan National Tourism Organisation. A FAM trip is basically a trip for travel professionals, run to showcase certain areas of Japan with the hope that it will help you sell these to eager clients [...]
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This Friday I will join a group of volunteers bound for tsunami-devastated Ishinomaki city in Miyagi prefecture. Around hundred of us will take the bus from Shinjuku to spend a week helping with emergency relief activities. It will make a strange contrast to tour leading, but I am glad of the opportunity to be doing something practical, rather than just watching the news and feeling helpless, and I am grateful [...]
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On Tuesday, nine members of our Essential Honshu group got up for a 6am subway ride to Tsukiji fish market – the biggest in the world. The sights outside the market can be as interesting inside. Wandering amongst the closely-packed stores, we saw wasabi plants, beanpole-shaped burdock root and some rolling-pin-shaped daikon, then in the market itself, we saw live shellfish, wriggling eels [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: burdock root, essential honshu, may 2011, sushi breakfast, tsukiji fish market, yamazaki`s | 7 Comments »
The other evening I found myself drinking a nice drop of red and my mind was inspired to drift back to to my time living in the beautiful prefecture of Yamanashi. Why, you may ask, did this Argentinean vino remind me of my Japanese adventure? Well, though it may be a surprise to many, Japan [...]
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Monday April 18th 7pm Last night was our final dinner of the first Hidden Japan tour of the year. We were in Shinjuku, the bright neon heart of central Tokyo. We ate at a traditional izakaya (Japanese diner). Earlier in our tour, we had a memorable picnic under the sakura that included scotch eggs, now with the salarymen below the skyscrapers [...]
Filed under: Sightseeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: april 2011, hanami, kabukicho, omoide yokocho, piss alley, sakura, shinjuku, tokyo | 2 Comments »
