Japan Navigator

The Kobe City Government has been active in providing some pleasant diversion for its citizens when they walk the streets of this port city. In other words, it has done what so many other Japanese cities do: placed a number of statues along its streets. And as usual in Japan, when selecting these works of [...]

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Whether I will make it to 1001 108 books, or get bored along the way, I do not know, but I have started reading in order to build my own “canon of great books.”
(After just two days I have lowered my target from 1,001 to 108 – 108 is a Buddhist number and a safer [...]

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In previous posts about Japanese cuisine and sake-making I have talked about the obsession with ultimate quality in cooking (and in cutting, which is very important in Asian cuisine as the diners themselves do not have a knife!), as well as of sake brewing as a handicraft that in the end is practiced on a [...]

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Sake brewing in Osaka began in Japan’s Middle Ages with a famous monastery, Amanosan Kongoji. Standing in Kawachi-Nagano, this is still a great Esoteric Buddhist temple. The sake, Amano-shu, was provided to the Ashikaga shoguns and also Hideyoshi is on record as a fervent admirer. Technically, this sake was also advanced – it was brewed [...]

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This weekend, I happened to come across a NY Times review called “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” by Peter Boxall. The reason I bring it up here, is that this list is unbelievably and unashamedly Anglo-centered (including the U.S.) – it is not even a list of great Western literature, let alone [...]

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Japanese popular culture is “cool” and for the first time in history, mass fiction is riding along on the high wave of manga popularity.
Although Nobel Prize winner Oe Kenzaburo is sadly lingering in the shadows, with too many important novels still going untranslated, today more popular fiction is being translated than ever before. Long established [...]

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The largest sake producing area in the whole of Japan can be found in Hyogo Prefecture, at the seaside of Nishinomiya and in the eastern part of Kobe. This area is called “Nada” and as there are five sake producing districts, one speaks about the “Five Nada Districts” (Nada Gogo). From east to west these [...]

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In Neomarxisme, Daniel Morales writes expertly about a neglected collection of short stories by Murakami Haruki (”Dead Heat on a Merry-go-round”) from the mid-eighties and its pivotal importance in understanding Murakami.

“He who would travel happily must travel light,” said Antoine de Saint Exupéry. His maxim has been translated into practical advice in this post [...]

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Sake is for 70% water, so water is by far the major ingredient. Water used in the sake brewing process is called “Shuzo Yosui” and can be divided into two types: “Jozo yosui,” or the water used for the fermentation process and “Binzume yosui” or the water used for bottling and other processes. The first [...]

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Rice and water are the two main raw materials in sake, but for sake, not all rice is equal. The rice used for sake is called “sakamai,” “Sake rice;” about 5% of all rice grown in Japan is “Sake rice.”
One particular type of “Sake rice” is the so-called “Shuzo Kotekimai,” the “Rice ideally suitable for [...]

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