Skye Hohmann - The Japan Times

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Skye Hohmann

For Skye Hohmann's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES

Nov 23, 2014

Once-stopgap market is much-loved symbol of recovery for Tohoku town

Initially a stopgap measure in the absence of local shops, the monthly morning market in Minamisanriku has become a cherished institution.

Japan Times

LIFE

Aug 26, 2012

Flashback to the sandy beaches of Izu

Once, after the wet, green month of June — which every year waters the newly planted rice, turns the landscape lush, and makes us long for sunlight and clear skies — my boyfriend and I drove all night just to swim in the ocean.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

May 20, 2012

Narai's nostalgic delights revisited

I was thinking about Narai today. It sprang to mind, unbidden, while I was driving somewhere else, and all day visions of the little streets and old buildings haunted me. Memories double-exposed over the place I was really in.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY

Mar 10, 2012

Cambodia experience facilitated aid effort in the Tohoku region

Cathy Hirano says it was "so painful to feel powerless in the face of such a huge disaster," recalling the day a year ago that the Pacific coast of Tohoku was hit by the huge earthquake and tsunami.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Mar 4, 2012

Winter kept us warm in Kamikochi's silence

Emerging from the 1.3-km darkness of the Kama Tunnel, our footsteps echoing eerily, we step into the white silence of Kamikochi's upland basin at the heart of the Chubusangaku National Park, which itself marks the center of the Hida Mountains, long ago dubbed the "Japan Alps."

Japan Times

COMMUNITY

Jan 7, 2012

Market network helps community bounce back

On a bright, warm late November day, an open-air market hums with activity. Children dart among strolling tourists, vendors cry out their wares to visitors and locals alike, who are looking to stock up on produce, cheap clothes and handicrafts from around the country.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Jan 1, 2012

Enjoy a hot night out at Nozawa Onsen

In the north of Nagano Prefecture, mid-January is the dead of winter. White mountains rise up into cloud. Fields are blanketed in snow, woods are bare and villages are hushed by cold. All along the roadsides, snowbanks rise as high as car windows, their sides revealing layered strata of snowfall after snowfall — the geology of winter. This is real snow country.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Nov 20, 2011

Memories of Mount Takao

Sometimes in the Japanese autumn, when the days are still warm and the air is beginning to smell of persimmons and fallen leaves, my mind stumbles across a day nearly 20 years ago now, and I turn the memory over and over as I try to make sense of how the time since then has passed.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Oct 2, 2011

Yatsugatake wanderings in the wet

The old volcanic peaks of the Yatsugatake Mountains describe a narrow crescent across the forested plains and hills in this corner of Honshu where Yamanashi and Nagano prefectures meet. The southern slope of the range is a near-perfect sweep, a quadratic equation graphing the land up into the sky, and from a distance it has a magnetic pull on the eyes, drawing them upward.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Aug 21, 2011

Coming of age in Kamakura

When I first went to Kamakura I was 16 and full of wonder and anger and curiosity; a coiled hope poised at the edge of experience.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST

May 24, 2011

Travel firms feel pinch, pitch in after disasters

Every spring, as the wave of blossoms sweeps up the archipelago from south to north, washing up from the coasts into the higher altitudes, travelers flood into Japan. Rivaled only by the cool autumn months that redden maple leaves across the country, March and April are high season for tourism in Japan.

Japan Times

COMMUNITY

Apr 9, 2011

Evacuation turns into chance to help victims

OXFORD, England — When the offshore Tohoku mega-quake caused tsunami to slam ashore on March 11, crippling the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, Japan was figuratively as well as literally shaken.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Mar 6, 2011

Those old Snow Country blues

Sometimes I'm not even sure we were there at all. Distance and time often give perspective and clarity, but now when I try to call that day to mind, everything is obscured by a thickening curtain of falling snow.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Feb 6, 2011

Tsumago: Living off its past

Tsumago is, indisputably, a charming place. Low mountains swing the former post-town's main street around in a curve of weathered wooden houses, backdropping the scene with the dark green of the firs that cloak the hills.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Nov 14, 2010

Back in the mists of time

It was November, and the leaves were ocher on the trees swathing the hills behind the reconstructed wooden buildings. Gaggles of chattering exchange students ducked in and out of the faux historical shops and houses, obviously enjoying themselves and their day out.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Oct 10, 2010

It's the history that keeps a growing city from ruin

We first stepped off the train at Matsumoto Station several years ago. It was August and the ripening rice paddies tinted the surrounding farmland chartreuse. Conifers darkened the distant hills. We were greeted by the eerie, long announcement that makes the station famous. "Matsumotoooo, Matsumotoooo," came the chanting call over the speakers as we dragged our bags up the station stairs, suitcases bumping heavily against each step.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Aug 8, 2010

Getting high in the highlands

High in the Northern Alps of Japan there are snowfields in August. Up above the tree line, wherever the bare geology dips into cirques, thick blankets of dirty white stretch out between the peaks and jagged ridges like caught clouds.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Jul 11, 2010

Takamatsu then and now

In 1988 I was an awkward, dreamy kid with clumsy elbows and scraped knees, and Japan was a place I'd never even thought about. Impossibly far away and altogether foreign, it seemed fantastical.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Jan 3, 2010

Soaking up the simians

Outside the car windows the landscape was a textured patchwork: winter orchards, rice paddies and tile-roofed farmhouses all stitched together by the threads of narrow roads.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

Dec 13, 2009

Where myth meets the present

On the edge of town, by a bridge over a stream amid fields of rice stubble, there is a roughly hewn stone Buddha. The path to it is well worn, and though someone has left an offering of the last of the season's quinces at the base of the statue, today there's no one else around and only the sound of the river and the statue's presence for company.

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

Historically, kabuki was considered the entertainment of the merchant and peasant classes, a far cry from how it is regarded today.

For Japan's oldest kabuki theater, the show must go on

By Lance Henderstein

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Leading Japan’s sustainability from Tokyo

Leading Japan’s sustainability from Tokyo

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