Japan Navigator

“Japanese wine” is not an expression to bring joy to faces and make mouths water. I still remember the not-even-so-cheap head-ache stuff I drank when I first came to Japan, more than 25 years ago, and although things have improved a lot, Japan will never be a great wine country. Not because the Japanese can’t [...]

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Tottori is a small prefecture as sake goes, with only an annual production of 1,573 kl and 24 breweries. There are no Tottori toji left anymore, usually toji from neighboring Izumo or Tajima come to work here. But that does not mean Tottori sake does not have a character of its own. Like other prefectures [...]

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“How to escape Tokyo by its many train lines, and what to do once you are outside…”
Today we will follow the Tohoku Line, one of the oldest lines in Japan, already dating from the late 19th c. It starts in Ueno and runs 631.3 km to Aomori. The part we follow, to Kuroiso, is also [...]

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The Gion Festival held in Kyoto from July 1 to July 29 originates in a ceremony organized in the 9th c. in the Shinsenen Pond, then part of the Imperial Palace. Halberds were carried here and dipped in the water as supplication to the gods to end an infectious disease. The festival was annually repeated [...]

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A particular fish called hamo is so popular in summer in Kyoto, that the Gion Festival (held tomorrow, July 17) is even called “Hamo Matsuri.”
Hamo is Daggertooth Pike-Conger, a white-meat fish from the eel family. As its English name reveals, it has a deep ripped mouth with sharp teeth at the upper and lower parts [...]

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Okayama is a beautiful green land, both the capital and nearby Kurashiki are great “museum cities.” Okayama City also is an convenient traffic link, because from here the train leaves for Shikoku via the Seto Ohashi Bridge, and in the opposite direction the railways provide a link to Shimane and Matsue on the Japan Sea [...]

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Thanks to the Yin and Yang calculations brought from China, Shinto has adopted a system of yakudoshi, or inauspicious years. In the past, mysterious calculations were necessary, but now the priests have decided that all women have their most inauspicious year when they are 33 years of age, and men when they are 42. People [...]

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Nagoshi no Harae refers to the “great purification” (oharae) that used to be performed on the last day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar. This goes back to a custom at the imperial court, but it in later ages it became especially popular among Kyoto’s townspeople.

[Chinowa in the Fujinomori Shrine, Kyoto]
For this [...]

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The Fujinomori Shrine in the Fushimi Ward of Kyoto is associated with horses and horse racing – its main festival on May 5 features kake-uma (showing military arts on horseback). The deities are militant gods and therefore Fujinomori was in the past popular with warriors.

[Shrine grounds, Fujinomori Jinja]
The shrine rather naively claims a history [...]

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In June, ajisai (hydrangeas) pop up everywhere in Japan: standing defiant along the roadside, peeping out of small private gardens, clustering in temple courtyards and parks.

[Hydrangeas like splashes of purple on the green leaves]
This year, at the end of June, I went to the Fujinomori Shrine in the Fushimi ward in Kyoto, a lesser-known [...]

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