Sep 6, 2013

I love Indonesian cuisine. The first time I went to an Indonesian restaurant was in 1998, back when I was a college student in Nagoya, a city in central Japan. I’ve forgotten the name of the restaurant, but I remember how much I liked the food. Fast forward more than a decade later. Having since moved to the Tokyo vicinity, I found the place to be for...

Jun 4, 2013

It’s early summer, time for the irises to bloom and show off their violet, purple and white gorgeous clothes. There are several places to see these summer blessings, and one of them, the best in Yokohama as far as I’m concerned, is at Sankeien Garden. (Continued after the Japanese...

Apr 2, 2013

¡Hola! ¿Qué tal? That is all I can remember from two semesters of Spanish in college. It’s a shame, really, because now that I’m all grown up I find myself eating a lot of Mexican and Spanish food I might as well have learned the language properly. It’s actually my Japanese husband who loves Spanish food. I’m more of the Tex-Mex kind...

Mar 22, 2013

In Japan there is what is called 桜名所100選の地 Sakura Meisho Hyakusen-no-chi or the One Hundred Best Places for Sakura (cherry blossom) Viewing. If you’re looking for the nicest places for appreciating the beautiful but short-lived cherry blossoms then you can’t go wrong with this list. One of them is Mitsuike-koen in Yokohama, literally...

Oct 3, 2012

The Oktoberfest has come to town! Yey! Several of these are held around Japan in October: the one in Yokohama is the nicest of them all 🙂 I say this because the venue is at the Yokohama Akarenga-soko, red-bricked warehouses turned event complex. These are historical buildings completed during the turn of the 20th century. What could be a more appropriate...