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Over the years, I’ve been continually bothered by a key contradiction of travel:  Is tourism “good” or “bad’ for a place?   On the one hand, visitors bring much-needed tourism dollars to cities and towns that might struggle to support themselves otherwise.  On the other hand, along with the tourist hordes often comes overcrowding, disrespectful behavior [...]

For every big, famous city you pin on your itinerary -- teeming with tourist sites -- there’s always a quaint, little-discussed town nearby that preserves the local culture as a living time capsule.   In Italy, it’s possibly Verona.   In Spain, it’s most likely Ronda.  In France, my vote is for Bologna.   In Nepal, it’s [...]

When you think about Japan, a few stereotypical experiences come to mind, like:   taking part in a tea ceremony, attending a sumo match, catching sight of a geisha, walking under cherry blossoms or eating excellent raw fish at a sushi bar.   Myself, I’m always hoping in Japan to run into ninjas or photograph a [...]

When it comes to travel, there are two kinds of sights:  1) planned & 2) unplanned.   Planned sights include landmarks you find in a guidebook as well as ones you hear about from friends, family and online forums.  You “plan” to visit these kind of locations because, more often than not, they’re pretty darn [...]

  As long as there’s been a Japan, there’s been sake.  At least that’s the message I receive as I wander through the three-story history museum at Otokoyama Sake Brewery near Arashiyama, Hokkaido.   If ever there was a cathedral to the production and consumption of Japanese rice wine, this is it.   Here you [...]

Wouldn’t it great to have a secret lair?   Good guys like Batman and Superman have one.  Bad guys like the Penguin or Gru (the evil villain in Despicable Me) also have one.  It seems like everyone has a lair these days, a secluded place where you can hide out, make plans and train your Minions. [...]

Japan is a land of contradictions.  On the one hand, its people are some of the most easily-embarrassed folks on the planet.  At least once a day, you’ll notice a Japanese person putting a hand over their mouth and exclaiming, “Hazukashii!”  (“I’m so embarrassed!”).  I find it rather charming, actually – especially if it’s a [...]

Have you ever arrived in a location and exclaimed, “This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before?”  It’s a magical feeling, isn’t it?   It happened to me at Pagan, Myanmar.  At the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.  At Durbar Square in Kathmandu, Nepal.  Time again, I was unmoored from the familiar, transported to a place [...]