Ride the ordinary Tokaido line from Tokyo to its southernmost end, or miss your stop on the shinkansen, and you'll find yourself in the sleepy resort town of Atami. In Japan's boom days, Atami was the weekend vacation of choice, and on holidays you might still see busy streets and happy shopkeepers...
An absolute Mishima institution, Jun has been serving up hearty, affordable 'Japanese Western' comfort food to the locals since 1955. Just round the corner from Sanshin Zen Gallery a few minutes' walk from the JR station, it's a good ..
Green tea is one of Japan’s most representative products—and one of its most delicious. Green tea used to be such a prized commodity that it was used as a form of taxation in the late 1700s. One of the most prominent tea regions is Shizuo..
Looking for dinner one night in Shimizu after a tiring day exploring Seiken-ji temple and the Satta Toge pass, I didn't want to go far, so I just looked up and down the covered arcade adjoining my hotel. I found a Korean restaurant, liked what I ..
K’s House of Ito is located in a 100 year-old Registered Tangible Cultural Property. It is located within a 7-minute walk from JR Ito Train Station and a 4-minutes walk from the beach. The hostel offers hot-spring baths, free Wi-Fi, and three l..
Every autumn I go to Shizuoka city for the Daidogei Street Performance World Cup, pretty much my favourite event of the year. I like to stay somewhere central, comfortable and affordable, so I can pop in and out during the day, and all those boxes ar..
When I visit Japan, I get to stay in many hotels. I want to see as many places as I can, so I don’t spend much time in hotels and don’t like to waste my money. I try to find budget hotels with a hot spring bath as it’s good for rela..
After an interesting tour of the Canadian Village in Shuzenji's Niji-no-Sato, we headed for the final and last destination -- the Japanese Village. Along the way we came across the Fairy Garden, where we passed by the three-dimensional Royal Rose..
On a non-working holiday one late September, a Japanese friend took my co-teacher and I for a drive along Shizuoka's Suruga Bay then, passing by a huge soccer field, he drove the car off onto a long winding road going uphill. When we reached our ..
In the suburbs about twenty minutes on the train west of Shizuoka city, Fujieda flourished during the Edo era (17th to 19th centuries) as a post town on the Tokaido highway between Edo, now Tokyo, and Kyoto. It's quieter now, but the legacy of it..
