Vintage Maps that Continue to Soldier on After years of faithfully pointing sightseers in the right direction, these mostly painstakingly hand drawn Japanese hiking maps take on an ethereal quality of their own. Though they may have withered and at times been superseded by contemporary signage...
The Mystery Surrounding Kanto’s Longest Cave The Greater Tokyo Area features some fairly good tourist caves including the Nippara Limestone Cave in Tokyo and the...
Discover one of Tokyo’s Hidden Gems Last year I had the good fortune of staying at the Sokodo campground on Hachijojima Island. For a free campground, the facilities...
Mt. Tenjo 天上山 . The Japanese Alps of the Pacific Mount Tenjo is located on Kozushima one of the volcanic Izu Islands administered by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government...
Hunter-gatherer Cave on a Chichibu Mountainside On a recent outing to the ruins of the former Mitsumine Ropeway in Chichibu, Saitama we spotted what appeared to be a...
Elevator Ride to the Base of the Dam It’s not often you get the chance to take a 121-metre (397 ft) elevator ride deep within the recesses of a working dam especially...
Greetings from the Chichibukozan Post Office It came to a grand total of 2 yen to send a postcard to myself – a prepaid one with an extra two-yen stamp to make up the...
Old Postcards Reveal Hakone 55 Years Ago Blessed with natural hot springs, Hakone has been attracting travellers since the Edo period. In those early years, visitors...
A case of being stuck next to the wrong neighbour Japanese Buddhist temples are generally places associated with worship and a space to enjoy a moment of quiet...
Beautiful Postcards Recall Lake Okutama’s Early Years During the second half of the Showa Period from the 1950s onwards Japan experienced remarkable economic...
