Author: travelsquirrel

Okinawa island is a strange place – Way out in the ocean yet heavily populated, haunted by the Second World War, potentially beautiful, yet much of that beauty is squandered or hidden from the public.  A foreign power’s forces remain but it’s fun, for sure, and loaded with history, tons of restaurants, nightlife and with…

Okinakawa Prefecture is an 600 mile long archipelago stretching South from Kyushu Island all the way to the vicinity of Taiwan.  The biggest of the islands is Okinawa Island aka Honto, its main city is Naha and that will be our base for the next week.  There’s no rail system to speak of, other than…

I should be telling you now about Japan’s industrial revolution but, instead, what’s important to me at the moment is that there are no irons in Japan.  Yeah, someone might have one stashed away in a cupboard somewhere but in a hotel, inn, hostel or Airbnb, forget it. This, combined with the minimal availability of…

Globally, there are a surprising number of cities with active volcanoes within their city limits, but I don’t think Abby and I have ever stayed in one.  That is about to change as the Sakura Shinkansen glides into the city of Kagoshima near the Southern tip of Kyushu Island.  Given the time of year, we…

Japan is on the Pacific Rim ring of fire so it suffers from earthquakes and, occasionally, volcanic eruptions but, on the plus side, there are more than 27,000 hot springs discharging over 2.5 million liters of water every minute(!) (Thanks Wikipedia).  Kyushu Island, one of the main four constituting the Japanese mainland is a hot…

Still in Fukuoka, virtually at least, as the blog lags real-time:  We haven’t go to grips with Fukuoka the city as a whole but there are some excellent day trips accessible by train, which is cool given we have rail passes.  “Today’s” event is a visit to Huis Ten Bosch, an entire Dutch town amusement…

With our Superbug infection temporarily at bay, we take a local train to the Buddhist temple complex at Nanzoin.  By the way, if these days, you have an attitude about continuing to wear a mask when in crowds then I don’t recommend visiting Japan yet.   Mask wearing is extremely common in public and, virtually, 100% on…

It starts with a tickle in the throat, which develops into full-on soreness, then the coughing begins: Not the slightly annoying type, but the “this is bruising my lungs and I’m going to die” variety.  Sounds bad but, wait there’s more, a follow up bacterial onslaught where your lungs produce substances never before seen on…

It’s a slow start after yesterday’s shenanigans in Okachimachi, but we have a noon appointment at teamlab tokyo, an immersive art attraction in Toyosu near Tokyo Bay.  Japan is, generally, a wet and green country, and Tokyo is no exception with it receiving, on average, 63” of rain annually, with Winter being the only season…

Japan has recently opened up and Abby and I have been chomping at the bit to get back over there.  The plan is to, hopefully, hit maximum Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) in Tokyo then head South to the last main island, Kyushu and then onto the island chain of Okinawa.  I worked for a Japanese company for…