Pigeon's Poop

Japan is well known as a country where small tiny islands gathered up with intensely dense population. The size of entire country is just 1/25th of the United States, but its population density is 10 times more. Naturally, it is easy to imagine Japanese land space comes to very limited for the people to live in.  In the major cities, houses stand literally an inch apart from one another and the size can be as small as 36 square meters. Regardless, their houses still function as home to them and they dwell within. Throughout Japan, you can find interesting architecture from the past and contemporary time period and it creates sense of community that seems to be timeless.  Tadao Ando, a Japanese architect, always focuses on the nature of how people live.   He is no doubt one of the greatest architects in today's architecture field. He was born in Osaka, Japan in 1941 and became an architect by learning everything himself without having official education. ...

Hi there, I'm kind of amazed it's already the third round since I started this Rediscover Good Japan. Honestly, I thought it'd be much easier to write what is good about Japan but I soon found it rather harder than I expected not because it's hard to find what is amazing about the country but the depth of what I thought I knew about the country was not necessarily deep enough, so, to confess, I sometimes had to go back and research, then found something new. The process was kind of like reading a good book or watching a good movie; you read or watch it over and over again and always learn something every time. Japan is like a good book, or a movie and you can walk through it many times and still find something new each time. It is because the country is still alive.  And it is because there are people who make the country alive. I would like to talk about a man who is definitely one of those people who make the country alive; he is a master of sushi. H...

So...I started the series Rediscover Good Japan last week . I hope people find it interesting and find something new about Japan through my experience. This week, it's Nikko, Tochigi. Nikko is the capital city of Tochigi prefecture, which is north from Tokyo. When I visited, I was on my backpack trip by myself. And this trip happened by an accident. I think it was around summer of 2005 or 2006, I was visiting my family in Osaka and, as usual, I suddenly decided to do a backpack trip to Kamakura by myself. So I went to a book store to purchase a travel guide of Kamakura. Kamakura is a famous touristy city in Kanagawa prefecture located in south of Tokyo. I always wanted to visit the city, I don't know why particularly but I guess I always liked the sound of the city. As I expected, I found Kamakura travel guide books piled up in the domestic travel section. Now, I might sound a little bit picky to some people, but I normally don't take the first book that is ...