Rain Delays Play
It was raining hard when we woke up this morning and it’s not stopped all day, here in Akita prefecture. It’s been pretty frustrating – especially for Katy. For a photographer, rain is a virtual guarantee of a wasted day, unless you’re fortunate enough to have assignments indoors. That’s not really been the case for ...
The Akita News
The Demon Drunk There’s a case to argue that parents in the west are getting too soft. Katy and I grew up well after corporal punishment was outlawed in schools the UK, and people said life was getting too easy for kids then. I’ve heard horror stories about schools being told not to use red ...
If Midas had an island…
We’ve just returned from two days on Sado Island in Niigata prefecture. It started when we panned for gold and dredged up what you see above. And from then on, there seemed to be one colour we couldn’t get away from… [* Midas（ミダース）とは・・・ギリシャ神話に出てくる王の一人で、触るもの全てを黄金に変える力を持っていた事で知られる。] 新潟県での２日間は佐渡島で過ごさせてもらった。旅は砂金すくいで幕を開け、それからの２日間、見るものすべてが黄金に輝いているかのような滞在となった。（ちなみに一番最初の写真が砂金すくいの収穫品である） Our time in Niigata was made possible by: The good people ...
On and on and onsen
There is some fatal flaw in the British psyche that often leaves us paralysed with embarrassment. I think a lot of it come from some out-dated state of mind about things being “proper”. Frequently we seem to find ourselves scandalised and muttering into our chests. Hugh Grant does it a lot on camera. We are ...
Weight Watching
Despite the laughing scepticism of the of the Travel Volunteer Project Office, we came to Japan sincerely believing that by simply following a Japanese diet, we’d be able to lose a bit of weight. Even withtheir doubt, we’re reasonably hopeful (for the record, my starting weight was a shameful 82.5kg). Earlier in the year, we ...
Day One – Toyama
There was part of me that thought we might get an easy start to life as travel volunteers. That part – the fool – was completely wrong. Between jet-lag interrupting our sleep (again) and the possible consumption of one sake too many the night before, the start of our real journey crashed in on us ...
Day Zero
There was a moment underneath the low-ceiling in Kaikaro in downtown Kanazawa, with film crews in our faces, backed by clicking cameras, when I wondered if the belt on my kimono was too tight. It would have gone some way to explaining why my head had gone numb. It had just been announced that we ...
1 Day to Go
We’d like to congratulate our Travel Volunteers Katy and Jamie who set off on their journey tomorrow, September 15th.
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