On Japan Category (65)
Discover Tokyo
Ginza
Ginza is Japan’s world class shopping and food hub. World famous brand stores rub shoulders with high class department stores while the area is jammed with quality restaurants where you can savor Michelin starred sushi or traditional Japanese cuisine. Other favorite attractions are the food halls in the basement floors of department stores. They feature all imaginable food varieties, from a diverse range of sweets, to alcohol and regional food specialties.
Shinjuku, Kabukicho
With over 3 million users daily, Shinjuku Station lays claim to the title of the busiest station in the world. In the vicinity is the beautiful park Shinjuku Gyoen national garden. There are commercial districts with high rise buildings, department stores and large electronics retail stores. Japan’s largest entertainment district, Kabukicho, is also located right near the station. The area is packed until late at night with patrons attending high class nightclubs, casual pubs, karaoke, and pachinko venues.
Ryogoku and the Edo-Tokyo Museum
Adjacent to Asakusa is Ryogoku, the Sumo precinct. Numerous sumo stables are located here and Tokyo Grand Sumo Tournaments are held at Ryogoku Kokugikan (Sumo Hall) in January, May and September. A distinctive feature of this area is the restaurants that serve Chanko-nabe, a dish eaten by sumo wrestlers. Just nearby is the Edo-Tokyo Museum which exhibits the history of Tokyo from samurai days to the present.
Harajuku
Tokyo Journal Street Editor Kjeld Duits hits the streets with his lens to see what's hot in Harajuku
The complete article is available in Issue #272. Click here to order from Amazon
Living Legend: Toyo Ito
2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate Interview by Dr. Anthony Al-JamieIN March 2013, it was announced that 71-year old Tokyo-based Toyo Ito is the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize recipient.The Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded annually to a living architect whose “built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and com- mitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.” The laureates are awarded a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion.
Previous Japanese recipients were Kenzo Tange (1987), Fumihiko Maki (1993), Tadao Ando (1995), and Kazuyo Seijima & Ryue Nishizawa (2010).
TJ: Congratulations on winning the Pritzker Architecture Prize! It is the biggest award in architecture.
ITO: Yes. After it was announced, many architects from all over the world sent me congratulations. I was so surprised that it is such a big award!
TJ: Who congratulated you?
ITO: Yes. After it was announced, many architects from all over the world sent me congratulations. I was so surprised that it is such a big award!
Where to Stay in Tokyo
See TJ's recommendations on where to stay in Tokyo - ranging from the luxurious Westin Tokyo, to the affordable Nippon Seinankan Hotel to 'homestay' style accommodations through www.homerent.jp
Tokyo Weekend Excursions
Take a weekend excursion outside of Tokyo at the haven for artists Art Biotop in Nasu, or see the beautiful Mt. Fuji near Seikai Yamanaka Lakeside Hotel or the Fuji-Hakone Guest House.
Tokyo Street Fashion
Tokyo Journal Street Editor Kjeld Duits hits the streets with his lens to see what's hot in Harajuku
Ginza
Show this image to any Tokyoite and few will be able to tell you where this place is. They’ll guess it is somewhere abroad. But this is Ginza, Tokyo’s celebrated high-class shopping avenue as it looked in the 1880s.
A horse-drawn streetcar casually runs along an almost empty sandy road flanked with magnificent willow trees and Western-style brick buildings. How immensely different from today’s noisy and crowded Ginza.
Pointing his camera toward Kyobashi, photographer Kimbei Kusakabe stood near what we now know as Ginza Wako, a shop famous for its expensive watches, jewelry and other luxuries.
Garrity's Japan
The Open Road
As I sit at home in Hawaii, enjoying our short winter, or rainy season as many locals call it, I am reminded of a journey I took in the summer of 1994. At the time I was studying haiku poetry and the life of one of its most prominent icons, Matsuo Basho. It is difficult to turn a page of a book on haiku poetry without running into Matsuo Basho. He usually is the first author a foreigner meets when they begin haiku.
I decided to replicate Basho’s trip to Japan’s northern wilderness as detailed in his world-famous “Oku no Hosomichi.” A fifteen hundred mile journey from his home in Fukugawa, Tokyo to the north country of Hiraizumi, then left to Yamagata and south to Lake Bizen and ending his journey shortly after.
Tokyo Street Fashion
Tokyo Journal Street Editor Kjeld Duits hits the streets with his lens to see what's hot in Harajuku