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Day Hike from Tokyo: Exploring Myojingatake and the Outer Caldera of Hakone
[Visited on September 26th, 2020] Since I recently moved to Kanagawa (again), it makes sense to focus more on visiting mountains inside the prefecture. It is not easy to wake up and head all the way to Saitama after all. Well, considering that I had already been to Mt. Oyama, Mt. Jimba and Mt. Byobo,…
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Your imperial supermarket: Nissin World Delicatessen
For expats living in Tokyo, a lot of times finding simple ingredients to cook seems more like a treasure hunt. With Kaldi being a staple and other high-end supermarkets starting to shift their interest towards imported goods, the original trendsetter in Japan was none other than Nissin World Delicatessen. The single store shop in Azabu…
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Tsukimi: The mid-autumn celebration of the moon
The most important celebration of early autumn in Japan is Tsukimi (月見). Although in the modern era it has been reduced to special tsukimi-burgers in MacDonalds, it is originally a harvesting festival with roots from China. The name of the festival is a portmanteau of tsuki = moon and mi = observe and basically refers…
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Hiking in the dawn at Bali: Mt. Batur
[Visited on August 2019, Greek version follows] The island of Bali, Indonesia is home to a couple of very active volcanoes, among which Mt. Batur (Gunung Batur) stands as the second tallest. At the foot of the mountain lies a wide lake, a byproduct of a past violent explosion together with a caldera. The path…
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Day hike from Tokyo: Mt. Mitake, Hinode and Konpira
During the peak of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, people of Tokyo were asked not to leave the capital, in order to prevent further spread of the virus to rural areas. Then the long holiday of Obon came about and everyone was stuck in the city, but soon a loophole was discovered: Okutama…
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Should I go study in Japan?
Usually, people decide to pursue graduate studies in another university or even another country rather than the one that they obtained their bachelor degree from. For many, Japan seems like an ideal choice; an opportunity to live in the orient without the pressure of work. Especially now that European institutions are highly competitive and with…
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