In earlier installments of Let's Eat Junk Food, we sampled Doritos, Oreos, and McDonalds. Today we venture into new waters: the Okinawan version of American (ish) food. When we visited Okinawa last October I noticed taco rice on many restaurant menus. About 0.3 seconds of pondering led to correct assumptions about the dishes origins: lots …

Continue reading Let’s Eat Junk Food: Taco Rice

Flea markets exist around the world; in Japan these markets are called shrine sales and take place at (surprise!) shrines on a regular schedule. Last week I decided to check out the goods at the Kanagawa Tenmangu Shrine Sale, more commonly known as the Machida shrine sale after the nearby neighborhood and train station. It's …

Continue reading The Beautiful Woman Discount, or Shopping at the Machida Shrine Sale

We returned from our Hokkaido ski trip on Sunday evening, and we all returned to the work-school routine the next day. So here are a few final thoughts and photos from our first ski adventure to Hokkaido. In my last post I mentioned an ice village. I saw this on the website and didn't expect much. …

Continue reading Back to School! But First, a Few Last Ski Thoughts About the Ice Village

Ok, so we're actually at Hoshino Tomamu resort, but autocorrect struck and gave me an awesome blog post headline to boot! As loyal readers may recall, early last ski season we headed to the famous slopes of Hakuba, home of the 1998 Winter Olympic Games. What we didn't realize until it was too late is …

Continue reading That Famous Hokkaido Ski  Destination, His Hobo Romani Resort

Today we set out for a ski weekend in Hokkaido on our first conventional domestic flight within Japan. I say conventional because in October we flew to Okinawa on a low cost carrier called Peach Airlines that was so low cost that we didn't even use a regular airport terminal, but rather a cargo terminal …

Continue reading Flying the 優しい Skies