A rose among roots on Awajishima
I'm bent over double, throwing up water I've just drunk. I can't keep anything down. "Excuse me. What are you doing there?" I look up. She's perhaps in her 30s and her wavy, auburn hair curls into her face, accentuating her small upturned nose and ...
Storming the keep of Himeji Castle
"What are your three favorite things about Himeji Castle," I ask my guide, Ayumi Miyazaki, an elegant middle-aged lady, as we slurp down tempura soba in the dungeons of Himeji Station in Hyogo Prefecture, prior to walking the 15 minutes up the main drag ...
Storming the keep of Himeji Castle
"What are your three favorite things about Himeji Castle," I ask my guide, Ayumi Miyazaki, an elegant middle-aged lady, as we slurp down tempura soba in the dungeons of Himeji Station in Hyogo Prefecture, prior to walking the 15 minutes up the main drag ...
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No such luck. It's just another humongous dark-gray cloud and it's spitting at me. "Hey!" I scream, waving my fist in the air at the darkening sky. "Leave me alone, you big gray bully!" I came to ...
He rides and he rides (and survives)
It's so hot, I've stripped down to my Y-fronts and with sweat dripping into my eyes and obscuring my vision I cycle east from my hotel near Sawara Station in Katori, Chiba Prefecture, along a path that runs beside the vast Tone River to ...
The naked and the (almost) dead
The feast of fish being delivered to our table is fit for the Emperor, as is the price of the room I'm eating it in at Inubosaki Kanko hotel in Choshi, a small seaside town in northeastern Chiba Prefecture. But I'm not complaining about ...
Second of two parts Mayumi's kimono finally falls to the floor. She wraps herself in a small white towel to keep some semblance of modesty and steps into the legendary Tsuboyu hot spring, which is built into the creek that runs through the village ...
Green and to the heart of the matter
First of two parts "Once you cross Tonda River, you're entering the Land of the Dead," says Brad, a tousle-haired, bespectacled, Japan-loving walking encyclopedia from Canada and also our chief guide on this venture into Kumano — the spiritual heartland of Japan, located on ...
Second of two parts There's a bible lying in the street outside the church opposite the Sendai City Hotel on Bansui Dori, where I'm staying this Easter weekend. The pages are flicking over in the breeze, inviting me to pick it up and read a ...
Dreams of the 'One-Eyed Dragon'
As usual, I check into the Sendai City Hotel on Bansui Dori, one of the best deals in town: It sits on the edge of the Kokubuncho entertainment district, has a Christian church opposite for easy penance if things get out of hand, and ...
