Japanese Survival Guide Point 6 – Language

I’m continuing for a few more weeks my regular Saturday spot – ‘The Japanese Survival Guide’, and today I wanted to look a bit at the Japanese language, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if you are headed to Japan it will help to know a couple of useful phrases, but also, to someone who’s …

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A Day at Fujisan (Part Two)

After the excitement of crawling through a tunnel created by lava, we headed around to the Sakik Iyashi no sato NENBA, as the brochure says. In Englished, it calls the place the ‘Thatch Roof Village’. Today it is a basically an open-air museum costing around 1000 yen to enter. You can go from thatched house …

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Golden Week and Chinatown in Yokohama

For those familiar with Japan, you’ll know about Golden Week. It’s the time the whole country is on holiday. As much as that’s possible as most places remain open and the hospitality is run off its feet. It began on Sunday here, and well it finished today. So it’s not much of a week really, …

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Hoa Lo Prison, Vietnam, and Propaganda

Hi folks. I have been trying to limit myself to five posts a week. I know that soon I will be back in full time work and the time I have spent on the blog of late will be greatly diminished, and even with the free time I have right now, I struggle to keep …

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Trains and Concept Cars Yokohama

Folks, if you’re a bit of a transport fan like me, then you’ll find a few things in Yokohama to interest you. Whilst the wonders of Hakone allow you to take various modes of transport about the place, in Yokohama I discovered a museum of model trains and the Nissan showroom which made for a …

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Brotherhood of the Travelling Beard

Howdy all. It felt time for a slightly quirky, reflective post and so here it is! One thing you can’t help but notice when you see males backpacking in a foreign city, be it India, Europe or wherever, is that a very healthy proportion of them have beards! People, who at home whilst working and …

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