At the end of March, having reached the age of 70 three months ago, I’ll retire from my post as a lecturer at Okinawa Christian University — mandatory retirement. Knowing this has given me a real sense of liberation in the past year or so, and since I plan to ...
St. Patrick may have banished snakes and brought Christianity to Ireland, but perhaps his greatest feat was one of sheer ...
A taste of Scandinavia In collaboration with the Grand Hôtel Stockholm (the only Swedish hotel that is a member of ...
Back in the late 1970s, the city planners of Karatsu, a fishing community on the northern coast of Kyushu, decided to build a new road. This provided a rare opportunity for local archaeologists. Seizing the chance to burrow with abandon in the densely developed ...
Visiting New Orleans in the buildup to Mardi Gras on March 4, you’ll find pizza, hot dog stands and rolling carts of cotton candy galore along the parade routes, but some of the city’s finest fare can also be consumed along St. Charles Avenue, ...
Kobe hotels offer a helping hand Six hotels in Kobe — the Kobe Bay Sheraton Hotel & Towers; the Hotel Okura, Kobe; the Kobe Portopia Hotel; the Oriental Hotel; Kobe, the Kobe Meriken Park Oriental Hotel; and the ANA Crowne Plaza Kobe — will ...
Tokyo’s weather in February is unpredictable, so when the day I have set aside for exploring features a record-breaking blizzard, I’m not surprised. So, bundled up like Everest conqueror Edmund Hillary, I exit Hiroo Station in Minato Ward to find the air feathered with ...
Spa retreat in Hakone From March 1, the Odakyu Hotel de Yama in the resort area of Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, will offer an accommodation package featuring a spa treatment to help rejuvenate bodies worn down by the cold weather. Away from the busy metropolis, ...
High-flying fashion On Feb. 6, British Airways brought Britain and South Africa together 30,000 feet over Johannesburg to showcase how its £5 billion investment is benefitting customers. The A380 became the longest catwalk in the sky for a fashion show featuring British designer’s summer ...
It’s all thanks to the Spanish ambassador, really. Angeles and I were at the Spanish Consulate in Fukuoka, Kyushu’s biggest city, to pick up her new passport. By midday, we’d done the business, slurped our way through the obligatory bowl of Hakata ramen, and ...
Of the many Western-style hotels that mushroomed across Bangkok in the 1960s, principally to accommodate large numbers of U.S. servicemen on leave from the Vietnam War (which was raging about 1,000 km to the east), the Federal Hotel was considered the granddaddy of them ...
Stay and enjoy Tokyo Skytree The Asakusa View Hotel is offering an accommodation package that comes with a ticket for the Tokyo Skytree observation deck. The hotel, Tokyo Skytree’s “official friendship hotel,” is in the Asakusa area, across the Sumida River from where Tokyo ...
As a child growing up in California in the 1980s, I learned my share of Japanese words. Sushi, which my family would get for a treat on birthdays. Mochi (chewy rice cake), ramen and karaoke — all encountered at the Japanese shopping arcade downtown. ...
The first time I decided to fly to Vientiane, I was faced with a tossup between a Lao Airlines twin-prop or Aeroflot Soviet Airlines. During the Cold War, when Laos was Southeast Asia’s “hermit kingdom,” these alternatives were literally the only two ways in. ...
Swissôtel’s Olympic viewing Swissôtel Nankai Osaka’s new sports bar, Nambar 10, which opened in October, will turn its attention to the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, through Feb. 23. The bar, which opened last year in conjunction with the hotel’s 10th anniversary, is poised ...
