Chris Bamforth - The Japan Times

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Chris Bamforth

For Chris Bamforth's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Dec 22, 2006

Mountain of dread

The stench of sulfur hits you long before you get off the bus. And when you do step off, it hits you all the stronger. Before you stretch the sickly, yellow-green waters of a caldera lake, whose acidity has expunged all fish life except for one hardy species (ugei or big-scaled redfin). Signs everywhere warn of the danger of poisonous mamushi pit vipers. Even at the height of the Japanese summer, the air is curiously silent, with none of the clamorous abundance of the insect life ubiquitous to Japan. The only sound is that of the raucous, ill-tempered crows that obviously have an affinity for the spot. Death seems to be built into the very fabric of things at Osorezan.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Nov 24, 2006

Netted by the charms of fishy Kochi

Arched around the underbelly of Shikoku and following the great indentation of Tosa Bay carved into that island by the Pacific, Kochi Prefecture is one of those places over which a sense of isolation has long seemed to hang.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Oct 27, 2006

Going by the book in Shikoku

A classic, once noted Mark Twain wryly, is what everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read. Thus, Japan has such grand works as the hefty 11th-century "Tale of Genji," which can claim universal respect, but relatively few readers.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Sep 22, 2006

On a pathway to the divine

Since it acquired the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004, more people have naturally felt inclined to see the temples and monasteries of Koyasan in Wakayama Prefecture for themselves. But more than a few visitors to the complex find that its heavy Buddhist religiosity and the funereal gloom of its Okuno-in necropolis make for anything but a joyful excursion.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Aug 25, 2006

Ainu culture in Hokkaido's Akan National Park

When Japan's Meiji Era (1868-1912) government concluded that the country had a manifest destiny to commence full-scale colonization of the hitherto barely developed northern island of Hokkaido, it set about the task assiduously.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Jul 28, 2006

Window on the West

It's hard not to feel well disposed toward a place like Nagasaki even before you set foot in it. Nagasaki was, after all, the port in western Kyushu that had to bear the torturous brunt of the anti-Christian persecutions assiduously pursued by the Tokugawa shoguns in the 17th century. And had it not been for the ill luck of smoke from a previous air raid hanging over the first-choice target, Kokura (now part of Kita-Kyushu), it would have been that city, not Nagasaki, that would have earned the unfortunate celebrity of being the scene of one of the world's all-time tragedies. The agent of destruction unleashed on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945 was the plutonium bomb "Fat Man" (supposedly named in honor of Winston Churchill's paunch), released from a B29 that had set off from Tinian, Northern Marianas, just three days after the world's first apocalyptic demonstration of nuclear weaponry in Hiroshima.

CULTURE / Books

Jul 9, 2006

Looking at Westerners' accounts of the salaryman blues

THE BLUE-EYED SALARYMAN by Niall Murtagh. Profile Books, 2006, 228 pp., £7.99 (paper). The phenomenon didn't start with Lafcadio Hearn, but in his day he became best known for it -- the foreigner who comes to Japan and writes a book about his experiences. His female contemporary, Isabella Bird, was a remarkable Victorian explorer who took herself off on great treks to then-obscure spots of the globe, among them Japan in 1878. Bird traveled Japan's little-known back country and Hearn deeply studied Japanese culture, but now, apparently, all you need do to find material for a book is come to Japan and get yourself a job.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Jun 23, 2006

The garden of earthly delight

An air of seclusion still hangs over Shikoku. This is despite the building of Japan's greatest civil-engineering white elephants -- three grandiose and grandiosely debt-ridden bridge systems that span the Inland Sea and connect the island with Honshu.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

May 26, 2006

The capital delights of Nara

To visit Kyoto is often to experience what Oscar Wilde thought of Wagner's music -- beautiful moments, but bad quarters of an hour. The time spent soaking up the splendors of its temples and gardens seems slight at the side of those long bus rides getting there across a cityscape that goes out of its way to be as dreary as possible. For a place that has managed to preserve its glorious past within an engaging present, you head for Nara.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Apr 28, 2006

Here be the land of the gods

You get them in research institutes, tucked away in small caves, perched atop spanking-new urban developments. Clamber up Mount Fuji and one is waiting there at the summit. Aside from desperately keen Shintoi aficionados, few people would complain that Japan suffers any dearth of shrines. While Shinto shrines can often be interesting, atmospheric spots, they tend not to be regarded as actual destinations in themselves.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Apr 16, 2006

Ring trilogy spirals past science fiction

RING, SPIRAL, LOOP, by Koji Suzuki. Vertical Publishing, 2003-2005, each $24.95 (cloth). One cinematic treat that 1998 turned out was "Ringu," which was the rarity of a well-worked, intelligent horror flick that won broad appeal among movie fans who ordinarily look askance at efforts in the horror genre. Four years later, "Ringu" gave rise to an even rarer bird in the form of "The Ring" -- the almost-unheard-of case of a Hollywood remake that didn't manage to butcher the life and soul out of the original.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Mar 31, 2006

Here's one castle to crow about

They may be unloved and unwanted, but even their detractors would have to admit that Japan's crows are tough, resilient critters. It is, then, entirely appropriate that the oldest castle in Japan should be named after these intimidating birds. The Japanese of yore had quite a fondness for naming their castles after creatures, and thus it is that Himeji Castle -- by general consensus the most elegant fortress in the country -- is named White Heron Castle because of its perceived resemblance to the dignified bird. Bearing the sobriquet of Karasu-jo (Crow Castle), the castle of Matsumoto is, as you might suppose, not a dainty little thing.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Feb 24, 2006

You can't get too much snow up here

Glaciers are in retreat, global weather patterns are going haywire and the Earth's climate is the warmest it's been in a millennium. Nonetheless, every winter, as regular as clockwork, winds from Siberia howl across the Sea of Japan, siphon up moisture, and dump it on Hokkaido as some of the world's heaviest precipitations of snow. One such place that never suffers from any shortfall in the snowfall is Niseko, a collection of ski resorts in southwestern Hokkaido that is blanketed each winter by over 15 meters of the white stuff.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Jan 27, 2006

A fortress to be reckoned with

From the soaring beeches in the forests of northern Honshu's Shirakami-Sanchi to the funereal Buddhist gloom of Koyasan in Wakayama Prefecture, those who let UNESCO be their guide will find no dearth of variety among Japan's World Heritage Sites.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Dec 23, 2005

A slow dive into Ishigakijima

You quit the airport and drive along roads flanked with palm trees, past fields of tall sugar cane and stone-walled gardens bristling with red hibiscus flowers, and it's clear that you've arrived in a very different part of Japan.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Nov 25, 2005

Izu's Shimoda basks calmly in past glories

Jutting south from Mount Fuji into the Pacific, the Izu Peninsula has something of a holiday air about it. The warm Kuroshio current flowing northward lends the peninsula a mild climate, and its position close to the suture lines of shifting tectonic plates means that rugged Izu has no lack of geothermal springs.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Oct 28, 2005

Journey to the end of the world

The name in Ainu means "the end of the Earth." And the bleakness and ruggedness of this lonely peninsula jutting out into the Sea of Okhotsk are such that little imagination is required as to how the Ainu -- the indigenous people of Hokkaido -- happened by the name of Shiretoko.

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink

Sep 30, 2005

The taste of Tosa in Tokyo

Long before the ballyhooed construction in the 1980s and '90s of the three stupendous bridge systems linking Honshu with Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's main islands was by far the least visited. But despite the completion of those civil-engineering white elephants, Shikoku has pretty much remained intact from over-infestation by the tourist hordes.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Sep 23, 2005

War and peace in Hiroshima

Before coming to Japan, most people don't know more than about half-a-dozen place names in the country. But one name certainly familiar to all is that of the largest city at the western end of Honshu.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Aug 26, 2005

Visitors become statuesque in Kawagoe

Tokyo may be big, but it's not big on history. The city's most popular historical spot, Asakusa, is centered on Asakusa Kannon temple, and its main hall was built in 1958. Frank Lloyd Wright's sublime Imperial Hotel survived the onslaughts of the 1923 earthquake and 1945 fire bombing, but didn't survive the onslaught of postwar urban planning.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.

Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

A young restaurant leads the way in Karuizawa

A young restaurant leads the way in Karuizawa

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