-
Day 18–Hikouki, the Flying Machine
In the same way that Americans have the nickname “Benjamin” for the US hundred-dollar note, because it depicts Benjamin Franklin on the obverse side, Japanese people call their 10,000-yen note a “Yukichi”, because the obverse depicts Fukuzawa Yukichi, a 19th-century samurai who (among other things) founded Keio University – Japan’s oldest institute of western higher…
-
Day 17–Shitaya, the Lower Valley
Japan has a whole lot of special trainsets for tourists called Joyful Trains – generally these are trains with unique livery and often a specially designed interior, but it also includes historical trains like steam locomotives. I’ve mentioned one of these before, the Pokemon With You train out of Ichinoseki, though I don’t recall if…
-
Day 16–Bunkyo, the Capital of Culture
Happy April Fool’s Day! Is there a prank in this post? Perhaps… After writing yesterday’s post, I decided to re-read my blog post from the day I last checked into this Toyoko Inn back in 2017 for the fun of it, and I rather thought my photo of the room from back then looked mighty…
-
Day 15–Ikaho, the Incense of Preservation
Occasionally when passing through stations during this trip, I’d see a plaque on the wall saying “This station selected as one of the 100 Stations of Kanto”. This got me somewhat intrigued, so I did some research. Apparently over a four-year period between 1997 and 2000, a hundred train stations in the Kanto region with…
-
Day 14–Shibukawa, the Astringent River
After last night’s episode with the 500 yen coin and the vending machine, I did a bit of research hoping to work out how to distinguish new style coins from old style coins, and wound up learning a whole lot. They were first introduced in 1982 at the urging of the vending machine industry, who…
-
Day 13–Usui, the Pestle of Ice
I gotta work at being more concise. These posts are starting to feel rather wordy, even for me. So, when I’m in my hotel in the evenings, I occasionally have the TV turned on to various panel shows, just for the fun of it. And one thing I’ve noticed is that they’re still taking a…
-
Day 12–Joetsu, Beyond the Top
In past trips here, Hyperdia dot com has been perhaps my primary resource for working out train routes between destinations. Unfortunately during the Pandemic Years, the site stopped using exact timetables to calculate the output, and now only gives average travel times, which is, quite frankly, almost useless for me. I’m honestly not sure why…
-
Day 11–Takasaki, the High Promontory
So, Japan is divided up into forty-seven prefectures. Administratively, each prefecture is composed of “gun” (districts) and “shi” (cities), and the “gun” are further subdivided into “cho” (towns) and “mura” (villages). There are some exceptions – most notably the Twenty-Three Special Wards of Tokyo Prefecture are officially “ku” (wards), but are not contained within a…
-
Day 10–Kawaguchiko, the Lake at the River Mouth
One advantage of wearing a mask almost everywhere I go here (though I take it off when I’m in particularly remote places so I can enjoy the fresh air… or when I’m walking up a particularly steep hill so that I can enjoy any air) is that so far, I haven’t needed to wear a…
-
Day 9–Yamanashi, the Mountain Pear
I’ve discovered on research that Minobu’s wide-spread adoption of the Yuru Camp characters is part of revitalisation efforts for the town – a program apparently established mainly by graduates of the Shimobe elementary and middle schools. Since the manga and anime came out, the town has seen a significant increase in funds received through tourism,…
About the blog
This is mah Japan travel blog. On which I blog. About travel. In Japan.
Newsletter
Subscribe for e-mail updates whenever I upload a new post.
Designed with WordPress.com
J³: The Next Generation 