There's no business like snow business
A few weeks ago I had things to do in Tokyo and Yokohama, so I had a ticket booked for a late-afternoon train from Nagano on Jan. 22. Then that morning my manager in Tokyo phoned to tell me I should come early ...
A return to Resolute: Exploring the wintry climes of northern Canada
We sailed from Greenland, across Baffin Bay, on Aug. 4, 2017. The sea was calm, and largely free of ice floes, although still dotted here and there with icebergs. The following day we reached the small community of Pond Inlet, more than 600 kilometers ...
Don't be fooled, pests are a problem — no matter how cute they appear
I recently went out to my friend John Harris' country home in the Isumi district of Chiba Prefecture, about 100 kilometers southeast of Tokyo. His house is midway down the Pacific coast of the Boso Peninsula, close to the small town of Onjuku, which ...
Come what may, we're doing just fine
Rain had started pelting the cherry blossoms when I returned from Tokyo last month, squelching the plans of countless would-be outdoor revelers. Here in Kurohime in northern Nagano Prefecture the snow was melting and the Torii River, which rises in ancient Togakushi and is fed ...
Lypa's art speaks of life 'out on the land' in the Arctic
On the wide wooden sill of the large window in my living room here in Kurohime, Nagano Prefecture, sits a soapstone carving of a gyrfalcon by one of Canada's most famous Inuit artists, Lypa Pitsiulak. Lypa was born in a small hunting and fishing camp ...
Macaques might make monkeys of us all
In 1980, when I came to live here in Kurohime in the hills of northern Nagano Prefecture, we had neither deer, wild boar nor monkeys in this area because — so the locals said — there was too much snow in winter for them ...
What's life without a sip and a song?
First of all, I'd like to thank so many readers for your kind messages to me over the past two months. I raise a toast to all of you. After the operation in November, although the doctors said my cancer was all gone, I wasn't ...
Miyagi school opening aids 3/11 recovery
The official opening of Miyanomori Elementary School on Jan. 10 represents an important stage in restoring some normalcy to the city.
An adventure I'd rather not be having
The time had come. I checked into the Japan Red Cross Medical Center in central Tokyo's Shibuya Ward on Nov. 7 and was shown to the eighth floor, where my airy private room has a shower and a sofa beneath the big picture window ...
Campfire pleasures both old and new
My father went off to war and never came back to us. My mother remarried when I was 10 and my new Dad was in the Royal Navy. Until I was 13 he was mostly at sea, so lots of chores came my way. One ...
Passing on ancient steel production techniques
When the first Portuguese merchants and missionaries reached Japan in 1543, the warriors they encountered were armed with steel swords that were equal to, or better than, any being produced in Europe. The blades of those lethal weapons, they soon discovered, didn't start life as ...
New horse lodge signals the way ahead
On July 15, 2016, just a few minutes' gentle canter from our splendid Afan Trust Centre here in the hills outside Kurohime in northern Nagano Prefecture, we officially opened our brand-new, first-ever horse lodge. Designed by Nobuaki Furuya and his team at Waseda University in ...
