During the first half our of trip we stayed in the small city of Nikkou (日光) in Tochigi prefecture (栃木県) for a few days. Our hotel was the “Marukyoo” (丸京), a small Japanese-style inn (旅館、ryokan) that only had 12 rooms. The price was a bit expensive at around 20000 yen (~$160 dollars), which is even… Read More »
In this installment of my “Travels in Japan 2015” series I’d like to talk about our experience with various means of transportation we used to move throughout the country, including trains and taxis. Air travel We began our trip at the Miami International Airport in Florida and landed in Japan’s Narita airport (成田空港) with a flight… Read More »
As you may have noticed, I haven’t been very active on this blog for several weeks. Fortunately, this isn’t because I was slacking off on my Japanese practice – rather the opposite. I just came back from an extensive 2-week long vacation to Japan with my family, where we toured all over Japan while jumping between 6… Read More »
A few weeks ago I entered in a contest on Haiku Girl’s blog and was lucky enough to win “Japan Journeys: Famous Woodblock Prints of Cultural Sights in Japan”, by Andreas Marks (published by Tuttle Publishing who coordinated with Haiku Girl to run this contest). This book contains around 200 Japanese woodblocks of famous scenic areas… Read More »
Many of us are into cultures from a certain foreign country, and feel that many things produced from that country are funny, interesting, or thought-provoking. Or maybe you’re a general culture nut and feel all the world’s cultures have something unique to offer. In my case I’m still very enamored with Japan and Japanese culture, but there are… Read More »
For lovers of Japanese culture and language, living in South Florida can be tough since there is a limited number of native Japanese speakers and authentic Japanese restaurants. One thing that goes a long way to compensating for this is the Morikami Japanese Museum & Gardens, located in Delray Beach, Florida. The Morikami gardens are… Read More »