Portraits of the lives of 31 members of a small community on a tiny island in Japan’s Inland Sea, spanning the Taisho to Reiwa periods (the past 100 years).
The Widow, the Priest and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island Review by Tina deBellegarde With The Widow, the Priest and the Octopus Hunter, Amy Chavez has presented us with a gift of cultural preservation. The author conducted a year-long oral history project on the Island of More…
By CJ Fentiman From Chapter 3: A Cat’s Resentment (toward those who help it) (猫の逆恨み / Neko No Sakaurami) I’d had kittens before, but none with such a destructive nature. Finally, I decided it was time to take him to the vets and get some advice. Maybe there was something physically wrong with him that More…
A guide to Japan’s biggest summer extravaganza: The Gion Festival
Review by Cody Poulton It’s a bitter irony that a festival that is nearly as old as Kyoto, dedicated to ridding the city of pestilence in the hot and sticky month of July, was cancelled by the world-wide coronavirus pandemic last year. 2021 bodes no better: the great processions of splendid floats through the city, More…
The long-awaited third installment in the series, entitled Best Day Walks Japan (US edition: Best Day Hikes Japan) has been published.
Review by Wes Lang My time in Japan coincides directly with the history of Lonely Planet’s Hiking in Japan guidebook. I arrived on these shores in March of 2001, just one month after the release of the first edition of the guide. I soon picked up a copy of the teal and black cover and More…
The following is an excerpt from a new release by John Burgess, Angkor’s Temples in the Modern Era: War, Pride, and Tourist Dollars (River Books, 2021). During the research for this book, the author’s fifth on Angkor, he found an abiding theme: tensions between the foreigners who came to Angkor—the capital of a great empire More…
Todd Wassel walks the 750-Mile, 88-Temple Pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan and finds some surprising things along the way.
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