As the cherry blossoms begin blooming, let’s look at a unique hanafuda set featuring the heritage of Kyoto. Visually this is one of the more stunning sets in my collection, but it’s best to compare it to a standard deck to see the artistic license taken. Most hanafuda follow these traditional motifs. The red borders […]
Every day on my morning walk I pass the Nakamura General Store (中村商店), or shouten as they say in the common parlance. It primarily sells Japanese sake and other alcohol. Somehow they are hanging in there, even with a massive Sapporo Drug Store right on its doorstep across the street. Less and less of these […]
Christmas and the New Year often bring with it an assortment of paper/wood models that I can’t wait to get started on. Japan has been really upping its game in this field in the last decade so I am always excited when a different brand I haven’t heard of before catches my eye. Ki-Gu-Mi has […]
Japan’s postal system really does a crack up job. Some of that comes down to geography, some of it comes down to history. Japan closed itself off for several hundred years prior to the 20th century. It had a lot of “me” time to focus on its overland highway system, getting messages from one village […]
Another morning walk encounter. This stalwart purple block unit hasn’t been open for at least a decade (we believe). The ground floor remains permanently shuttered. Yet the electricity still pipes through to the two vending machines. Don’t know if they generate enough income to even pay the utility bill.
Starting a series documenting some of the old buildings I come across in my walks around Sapporo. Today’s comes from my morning route up Asahiyama along Asahiyama-Dori. In the day time the right/yellow half is a fish shop. What is more interesting is the blue dry cleaner sign on the left side, which hasn’t been […]
A nice little project came my way via the interwebs, Pinterest actually, one of the few social networks I sometimes dive into. It’s called a book nook, and it involves crafting a bookend or book spacer into a scene. They are often themed based on the books surrounding it. (i.e. Daigon Alley from Harry Potter […]
I have done Western style fly fishing since I was a teenager. Not well. I can barely tie my own flies, and my casting technique has been flawed. But I stuck with that method and managed to land some decent fish through the years. Then I discovered the Japanese method of tenkara, and immediately threw […]
With an aging society (as discussed earlier), you would expects there to be a huge surge in available home to purchase. But you would be terribly wrong. In fact, because of a variety of cultural-economic issues, purchasing a used home is anathema to the Japanese way of life. This saddens me because every day I […]
I hate shopping most of the time. That’s a tough position to take living here in Japan, with its long shopping arcades, both above ground and below. But there is one shop in this country I can honestly say I love. Love! It’s in Tokyo, in Kanda, and it sells traditional Japanese hanafuda, karuta, and […]