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I recently delivered a Powerpoint presentation at my local Toastmasters club about the three things that always stand out for me when traveling in Japan, namely: 1) Over-the-top Customer Service 2) Stunning Natural Beauty 3) Deliciously-Baffling Mysteries All of these things I experienced in spades on my recent trip to Hokkaido, most particularly at two […]

To receive the honor of visiting the Shiretoko Goko (Five Lakes) in Northeast Hokkaido, you need to follow a process. First you buy an admission ticket from a machine for 250 yen (~ $2). Next you fill out a registration form. Finally, you attend a 15-minute briefing session, geared towards disseminating proper trail behavior – […]

I’ve seen the Statue of Liberty three times: once in New York (on Liberty Island), once in Paris (on the Île aux Cygnes, an artificial island in the Seine River) and once in Tokyo (on Odaiba Island). What a strange, disorienting experience it is, seeing a landmark from one place suddenly transplanted to a completely […]

Am I the only one who wonders why Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco is such a boring place? I mean, here you have one of the most famous chocolate brands in the world, Ghirardelli Chocolate, but where’s the fanciful factory? The Oompa Loompas? The lickable wallpaper? What could have been a magical, Willy Wonka experience, […]

Don’t get me wrong: Otaru, Japan is not Fisherman’s Wharf, Time’s Square, or Niagara Falls. But it’s cut from the same cloth. It’s a town that I was prepared to adore. A port city on Hokkaido (Japan’s northernmost island), Otaru sits on a bay about 90 minutes northwest of Sapporo. One of the first towns […]

I don’t generally go in much for “historical re-creations.” I mean, sure, it’s great that historians preserve old buildings from around a country, then bring them together in one location. But then what? Given my druthers, I’d probably choose a movie set (like Hobbiton in New Zealand) to a historical recreation site. At least on […]

There aren’t many beers in the world named after the city where they were created. About the only other one I can think of is Shiner, a beer brewed in Shiner, Texas. Thus, when I heard that Sapporo Beer, the oldest in Japan, has been fermenting in its namesake town for 150 years, I needed […]

Over 30 years ago, I’m living in the rural town of Shimonoseki, Japan, finishing up my evening jog around the nearby rice paddies. As I round the last corner, my course parallels the bullet train tracks, high above and to my right. Suddenly I hear a whooshing sound and look up. Sparks sizzle off the […]

Dads love trivia, don’t they? Some know baseball inside and out. Others know their WWII battles. My dad knew everything about classical music. “Did you know, Dave, that when Beethoven first performed his Ninth Symphony, it was so revolutionary it started a riot in the theater!” “Really, Dad?” “Yes, really. No one was expecting a […]

Wow Place #316: Prambanam Temple, Indonesia Growing up, I was almost-magnetically drawn to adventure films like Indiana Jones. I ate up pretty much anything that involved swashbuckling archaeologists battling cannibals, boa constrictors (and yes, Nazis), all in search of hidden, supernatural artifacts. When, in my 20s, I started traveling around the world in earnest, I […]