Japan Navigator

Nowadays, Japanese whisky is reaping lots of international praise – The Guardian recently wrote about Nikka’s world-beating single malt, Yoichi, distilled in a pristine place in Hokkaido:
It is hard to imagine a place more suited to producing fine malt whisky. Surrounded by mountains on three sides and volatile open sea on the other, and fed [...]

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Murakami Haruki has written several bookshelves full of non-fiction works, usually still available as “bunkobon” (pocket books) in Japan, but none had appeared in English so far. That was not surprising: Murakami writes a sort of “light essays” that share the colloquial “talking to myself” style with his novels, but on a level of much [...]

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This weekend I discovered a nice hiking route in Kyoto, next to Ninnaji Temple: a small-scale copy of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, laid out on Mt Joju. When I first heard about it, I thought it must be something in a park (sometimes a copy of the famous pilgrimage only consists of 88 stones you have [...]

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There is one more sakura spot I visited this year: the Hirano Shrine in northern Kyoto. The Hirano shrine has been a popular blossom-viewing site since the Edo-period, and is especially famous for its yozakura, sakura after dark enjoyed by lantern light.

[The sakura park next to the Hirano Shrine]
I came there by full daylight, after [...]

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In a previous post I was enthusiastic about the cherry blossoms in the Kyoto Botanical Garden – also because I had special memories about the tulips there. But the Kyoto Botanical Garden meets its match in the sakura of Ninnaji – last weekend in perfect, full bloom.
Ninnaji is famous for its late blossoming yaezakura. Also [...]

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FXCuisine.com features a beautiful photo essay called “Japanese Bladesmiths.” In a unique behind-the-scenes visit of the craftsmen who produce the best (and most expensive) kitchen knives in the world, we are introduced to the work of the forger (hizukuri), who softens the metal by heating and hammers it out into the shape of the blade; [...]

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Someone placed a camera on the conveyor belt in a kaiten sushi restaurant. Here is what the camera saw…

Apparently, most guests were very much aware that they were being filmed by a gaijin… Later on you hear the chef shouting to remove the camera. It took about 4 minutes to go once around the room.
[Via [...]

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Right next to the Kyoto Botanical Garden, another prefectural extravaganza has been laid out: a plaza with walls of cascading water, designed by Ando Tadao in his familiar style of smooth concrete. Called Garden of Fine Arts, it has been built below ground level to keep it from obscuring the adjacent Botanical Garden. One could [...]

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The Kyoto Botanical Gardens are perhaps not what first comes to mind when thinking about a hanami spot. After all, they have to compete with the Philosopher’s Path, Arashiyama, Daigo, Gosho, Ninnaji and other luminaries. But I can report they are surprisingly good.

[Sakura in Kyoto Botanical Garden]
Of course there are the sakura – about 500 [...]

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Last week Japan Navigator had some technical problems, causing the site to be unavailable for a few days, for which my apologies.
I am still not sure what happened: I installed the latest version of WordPress, and something may have gone wrong there, or the site was hacked (what I thought at first). After long [...]

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