In Fair Kyoto Where We Lay Our Scene
Zen Meditation It’s fair to say I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment. Our great Japanese adventure is drawing to a close. The unmanageably massive question of “what next?” needs to be answered. I have an impending job interview. I don’t yet know what I’m going to get my mother for Christmas. ...
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Arty Farty
Another syndrome you should know about is that of The Wee Man. The key symptom is that the smaller-than-average person tends to compensate for their lack of feet and inches by being boisterous and uppity. Napoleon had it. So did Ghengis Khan. And so too does Kagawa, Japan’s smallest prefecture. While other, larger, prefectures are ...
Nara Say Nara
So far as capitial cities go, Nara’s shift as the top dog was pretty brief. For just 74 years from 710AD it was the ruling city of all Japan, including a five year holiday when power was transferred to what is now Osaka. Actually, moving the capital was a standard practice at that time: each ...
The Gassho Houses of Gifu
Despite their obvious good intentions, UNESCO divide opinion. Some people deride their World Heritage List, moaning that it damages the very places it seeks to protect. A bit like an upper class version of the Lonely Planet, the moment UNESCO offer their stamp of approval, the recommended place ceases to be a hidden treasure and ...
Training Days
Today is our 40th day as travel volunteers: if we were emigrating pets, or Jesus Christ, it’d be time to leave quarantine and come home for a bite to eat and a bit of a cuddle. But we’re neither, so we keep travelling. In fact, for two of those 40 days, we’ve been nothing but ...
A Little Prince, Weird Eggs and a Journey to Another World
The Little Prince (or Le Petit Prince, to give him his original, French name) gets around a bit. He’s the star of what people say is a children’s book, but, like the greatest stories, it’s not exclusively for younger readers. Katy didn’t meet the little wanderer until she was well into her teens. The moment ...
Fuji-itis
There is a mental condition of which you may not have heard: The Paris Syndrome. The symptoms are thus: Japanese tourists save up for a couple of years and use all of their scant holidays to travel half way around the world to the French capital. En route they read and reread their guide books ...
The Fear Factor
Anyone who’s ever travelled to a UNESCO World Heritage site knows the feeling – hell, anyone who’s ever been to any tourist attraction of any note knows the feeling. Just for a second, you wish you could have the place all to yourself. But you can’t, because the world is overpopulated, the number of tourist ...