Like a virgin Since 2010, together with my running buddies, we have been making yearly trips to Japan and onsens always feature prominently in our itineraries. Takaragawa Onsen was one of the first they visited. I wasn’t with them at that time but they made sure I became […]
Can’t last a day without Men (麺) When in Japan, you can’t not eat ‘men’. There are all kinds of men in Japan. Ramen. Soba. Udon. Instant. Bespoke. Have them hot, in boiled savoury soup, or eat them cold/dry, dipping them in sauce/soup. Or fried – with vegetables/meat/seafood. Recently, […]
Ode to Friends It’s true, having friends help widen one’s horizons. Someone proposes a crazy idea, another acts on it and then you find yourself being swept along. Buoyed, raised, pushed beyond your boundaries. It’s really good to have friends. I’d never have run a marathon, if not […]
After Typhoon Lan, a day of perfect weather The gamble paid off. A day earlier, we queued for over an hour at the Kanazawa JR ticket office because some shinkansen lines were stalled due to Typhoon Lan. We were skeptical that the weather would really be fine like mountain-forecast.com predicted but […]
One day out of the blue, my mate asked: why are we going to Ginzan? (ok, she meant, why, out of so many onsens, did I choose this one?) I gave her the only answer that came to my mind then: because there’s a ryokan there that looked like the […]
