TRAVEL FEATURES
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Matsumoto in May means 'crafts '
England gave the world the Windsor chair, but it was the city of Matsumoto in central Nagano Prefecture that reinvented it for Japan.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Moving and shaking on Sakurajima
It looked like the kind of comfortably oily rag that makes a mechanic's job easier — the sort you find scrunched up in the corner of a garage soaked with tales of its long career, how it protected all manner of tools from rust, greased jamming gears ... and helped fix Mrs. Jones' "unfixable" carburettor back in '83.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Yonaguni: Japan's most westerly isle
A colossal, dark-skinned man rides along the sidewalk on a motorbike: no helmet, two small children aboard — a vision of life in the laconic Tropics. There are times here too on Yonaguni, the westernmost land mass in Okinawa Prefecture, when you see a curvaceous island woman in a vivid, flower-patterned dress, and you think of Paul Gauguin and the Tahitian women he painted.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Dazaifu's rich past still delights today
The gravel of a path in the garden at Komyozenji Temple has been swirled into the shape of the kanji for "light." It's a bit of an ironic choice for the fall day I visit, as only a few of the sun's rays have managed to penetrate the dense growth surrounding the rear of the temple. Those that do filter through the red-tinged maples, though, bathe the garden in an ethereal glow befitting daybreak rather than the near-noontime it actually is.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Winter kept us warm in Kamikochi's silence
Emerging from the 1.3-km darkness of the Kama Tunnel, our footsteps echoing eerily, we step into the white silence of Kamikochi's upland basin at the heart of the Chubusangaku National Park, which itself marks the center of the Hida Mountains, long ago dubbed the "Japan Alps."
Sunday, Feb. 19, 2012
A glint of copper hints at Fukiya's mining past
Sitting in sublime obscurity in a raised valley one hour by bus from Bitchu-Takahashi, Fukiya Furusato Mura in Okayama Prefecture must surely be one of Japan's most under-appreciated rural destinations. Mention the name even to Japanese travelers and you are likely to draw blank expressions.
More travel features >>
|
BACKSTREET STORIES
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Plum nuts about Ikegami
Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012
Fish tales of Tsukiji
More Backstreet Stories >>
|
HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
|
ON THE ROAD
|
NATURE TRAVEL
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Namibia's no man's land
|
THEN AND NOW
|