When I look at my timehop app on my phone, I see a recurring theme. Although I had a lovely boyfriend in Japan, lived in a 2 bedroom house (Anyone who has lived in Japan knows how rare it is to find and afford one!), lived an hour from Tokyo and spent free weekends travelling…
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In 2016 I felt like I barely travelled anywhere. I can only add one new country to my ‘list’ and that is Russia, my new home. However looking back 2017 was probably one of the most important years of my life. I fell in love, decided that Japan wasn’t the country for me and decided…
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I grabbed my camera close to my chest as another surge of people passed me. A purple pram clipped my heels but I somehow managed to stay on my feet. The shoving stopped, I relaxed and looked up. A gold Mikoshi was lifted high in the air by Japanese wearing bright green robes. Despite the…
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It’s weird to move to a country you’ve never visited isn’t it? Let alone one on the other side of the world with a unique culture and one of the worlds most difficult languages. The differences just made the move seem all the more exotic and exciting. Like any great love story mine starts with…
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Yesterday I went for a walk in Moscow. I walked across a covered bridge and was greeted by a familiar sound. “Irasshaimase”, the voice boomed. I looked to my left and spotted a Japanese vending machine. I peered closer and saw that all of the drinks inside were Japanese too. This simple sight brought back…
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Utsunomiya is the main city of Tochigi prefecture, a place that`s consistently voted one of the most boring prefectures of Japan. Many people are underwhelmed with this city and see it as just a gateway to Nikko, one of the most culturally rich places in Japan. Don`t wipe Utsunomiya from your itinerary though. This city…
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I’ve always talked about how safe living in Japan is. Since I’ve lived here I’ve not felt scared once. That’s a big contrast to the number of times I’ve felt scared in England and in other countries when travelling. It’s just safe, isn’t it? One weekend I was in Tokyo. I spent the day exploring…
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No matter how much someone likes travel, there really is no place like home. Home means comfort, safety and love. It’s a place you know you belong and a place where you fit in. Unfortunately when you live in Japan, home literally is thousands of miles away. I wrote about the first time I felt homesickness…
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I’ll let you in on a secret. Last summer I was regretting my decision to move to Japan. I found Japan an extremely frustrating place to live and found the culture quite claustrophobic. I was done. Then I spend a week or two in one of my favourite countries in the world, Thailand. So many…
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I must have been a teenager when I first heard about Kobe beef. I was watching a TV programme that said it was the best meat in the world and it’s only found in Japan. The cows were reportedly massaged daily and given beer instead of water to drink, secrets to make the meat so…
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