Eating well ... is about submission. It's about giving up all vestiges of control, about entrusting your fate to someone else. It's about turning off the mean, manipulative, calculating and shrewd person inside you, and slipping heedlessly into a new experience ... It's about shutting down the radar and letting good things happen.
(Anthony Bourdain ( Read more... )

THIS WILL PROBABLY be my last entry (for a while, at least). As I write this, I am sitting at home in Australia, the memories of Japan already fading. It was, without a doubt, the most formative year of my life. A part of me misses it terribly, and wants to return. So it seems fitting that my last entry should be about monuments: structures that ( Read more... )

THE CHERRY-BLOSSOM is a national symbol of Japan. Watching the blossoming trees is a national pastime, and people have been doing it for 1800 years.


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THESE CLIPS show two sides of Hiroshima.


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THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN a great rivalry between Osaka and Tokyo. Now you can decide which city you prefer.


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My top 10 experiences in Japan:

10. Himeji castle in Hyogo. (Entry #22)

9. Sakinoyu Onsen (hot spring) in Wakayama. (Entry #46)

8. The Kobo Daishi mausoleum on Mt. Koya. (Entry #16)

7. The Yamakasa festival in Fukuoka. (Entry #52)

6. Hanami (cherry-blossom viewing) in spring. (Entry #57)

5. Fushimi-Inari shrine in Kyoto. (Entry #45)

4. Kuidaore ( ( Read more... )

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