It has been nearly a year since COVID put a big, fat STOP sign on nearly all international travel. Being obsessed Japanophiles, Super Sake Boy and I have tried to take the travel ban graciously, while feeding our need for Japanese food, sake, culture and connection with the language. We were last in Japan in…
Category: Travel
Americanism- why the Japanese do American better than the Americans??
When travelling in Japan it is hard not to notice the influence of American culture and how the Japanese have embraced the culture to such an extent that it has become very much a part of Japanese culture. The two cultures have become intertwined in such a way as to be inextricable from each other….
RAKU- A sublime dining experience.
When I looked up “best Japanese restaurant” in Canberra, Raku was the obvious front runner, with many people extolling its virtues. I always look up the best local Japanese when we travel, as we love eating Japanese food and I am always interested to see how other places do it differently. We are lucky in…
Another exceptional sake experience…Taste with the Toji- with manga and a frog
From the moment we heard that Simone, the Sake Mistress, was hosting another Taste the Toji session, this time with Rumiko Moriki of Moriki Shuzo, we were excited. Super Sake Boy and I had met Rumiko-san and her husband, Hideki-san, at an excellent afternoon at Tamura Sake Bar in Melbourne. Hosted by Black Market Sake,…
Taste with the Toji- an online, lockdown, sake experience like no other…
My friend Simone, the Sake Mistress, is a clever and creative being. She was on a trajectory when COVID-19 hit and we were on our way to sip much sake and tour breweries together when international travel was pulled from current reality. She is a sake educator, but also has a hospitality background, and hosts…
Guesthouse Soi- My Home Away From Home
My first time travelling in Japan was just over five years ago. We travelled for a month and I tried to see as much as I could. We stayed in Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, Kamakura and had booked to stay in Hakuba. We also stayed in Kyoto. For only four short days. We had loved Tokyo,…
Love in the Time of Coronavirus… or The Quiet Ryokan
Twenty five days ago I wrote a blog about our impending trip to Japan. It feels like a year ago. Needless to say our plans have been completely disbanded and even if we wanted to leave the country, we could not. I am somewhat relieved we were not stuck in a difficult situation of being…
Travel and the Coronavirus
As a young person, probably in my late teens, I became somewhat obsessed with epidemiology and read voraciously about viruses, the CDC and Ebola, in particular. The Hot Zone, Virus X and The Coming Plague still sit on the shelf in our study. I feel like I have been waiting for the Coronavirus, without knowing…
Japan Fan in New York
Last week I was lucky enough to spend four days in New York on the way home from visiting relatives in Canada. What a crazy city. I am used to busy, I travel to Tokyo a bit, but this was different. Manhattan is so condensed and the buildings are so tall, it was a little…
Mining in to Hashima’s History
Wednesday morning saw us enjoying another delightful Japanese style breakfast, cooked by Fujiwara-san’s wife. The breakfast room was very pretty with shoji screens, tatami and shiny black furniture. The day out the window looked positively miserable. We have been quite lucky with the weather, with only short periods of rain. It’s the wet season here,…
Gunkanjima, the Battleship Island
Tuesday morning we were up early for a traditional ryokan breakfast. Not nearly quite as terrifying as our previous ryokan experience, a much more homely Japanese breakfast of saba (mackerel), rice, miso, tofu, pickles and green tea, the meal was delicious and satisfying. Fujiwara-san, the owner of the ryokan, is so cute, and his family…
Headed for Kyushu
Monday morning we were booked to take three shinkansen from Kyoto to Nagasaki. I woke up feeling very less than average and had been coughing and spluttering all night. I always feel sad about leaving Kyoto, but this time I was feeling so unwell, it was overpowering my impending dread. I got up early and…
