Conveyor belt sushi The Japanese have always been known for being extremely innovative and efficient — it’s no wonder they came up with the conveyer belt sushi. Here you will find sushi placed on a rotating conveyor belt that winds through the restaurant and moves past every table and counter seat. Customers may place special orders […]
Otagi Nenbutsu-ji is a Buddhist temple in the suburbs of Kyoto. There you will find 1200 rakans (stone statues representing the disciples of Buddha). These statues, in keeping with rakan traditions, are generally humorous and kawaii. The sculptures were donated in 1981 in honor of the refurbishment of the temple. Most were carved by amateurs, taught by […]
There are a lot of WEIRD things in Japanese culture…cat cafés being one of them! Technically, the first cat café opened in Taiwan in 1998, and it wasn’t until 2004 before the first Japanese cat café opened up in Osaka. The popularity of cat cafés in Japan is attributed to many apartments forbidding pets, and to cats providing relaxing […]
The Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum is a food amusement park located in Yokohama devoted to the Japanese ramen and features a large underground recreation of Tokyo with actual ramen restaurants. These ramen shops come from all over Japan: Sapporo, Asahikawa, Fukushima, Tokyo, Yokohama, Wakayama, Hakata, and Kumamoto, each with their local tastes and identities.
Lost It’s really hard to navigate around Japan! Most small streets have no name, addresses refer to a series of concentric areas, streets are sometimes numbered according to when they were built rather than their location, and taxi drivers respond to landmarks not street numbers! Even with GPS assistance, I got lost countless times. I […]