We spent a while last night looking at the options for Teshima. The island is smaller than Naoshima, but the museum looks amazing and it also has art installations. However, it has even more limited ferry and bus service. Instead, we decided to stay in Takamatsu and spend more time going to destinations on the…

Today was a mix of astonishing art experiences and logistics acrobatics. I was drawn to this area of Japan by The Setouchi Triennale, a contemporary art festival held every three years that has a mix of permanent and temporary installations. Although our travel time did not overlap with one of the official festival weeks, there…

I love Takamatsu! To get here we took the limited express to Shin-Osaka, the Shinkansen to Okayama, and the Marine Liner to Takamatsu. The limited express leg is a quirk in how the Kansai West pass works, as “West” starts in Osaka. We arrived at Kyoto station pretty early to eat and get our bearings.…

This morning we wanted to get an early start because we were going to Kinkaku-ji, one of Kyoto’s busiest locations. We ended up timing things with the rain instead. It started immediately after we got on the bus, poured for the 45 minute ride, and stopped seven minutes after we got off. It felt great…

While I was planning our itinerary I expected it to be warm and rainy, not hot and humid. Looking at Weather Spark, the actual temperatures have been higher than the 90% percentile. Here’s today: https://weatherspark.com/h/d/143438/2025/6/25/Historical-Weather-on-Wednesday-June-25-2025-in-Kyoto-Japan. If I could plan it again I would try to keep our outdoor activities focussed in the early morning and…

There was a light rain as we walked to a small breakfast place near us. I had オムライス (omurice), which was mentioned with relative frequency in my Japanese language study materials. It’s seasoned rice wrapped in a thin omelet with ketchup. I’ll be looking up a recipe as it was delicious. We took our time…

We hit two key itinerary points today: Gundam Base for Soren, and riding the Shinkansen for Ned. Considering how much transit time we’ve already accrued I punted on our plan to breakfast at Tsukiji Outer Market and instead we walked over to the diner-style restaurant Royal Host. It was super quiet and uncomplicated. Plastic hobby…

Today was very full, even after I dropped a couple of things from the planned itinerary. We only have two nights in Tokyo so it was tough to plan. We had pastries at The City Bakery in the train station, then took the train to the Daikanyama neighborhood. Daikanyama is cute, with Instagram styled fashionable…

Japan time! Our December 2013 trip was Tokyo focused; this time we’ll spend some time on the Shinkansen (high-speed train) to see more. Japan’s been on the family shortlist for a while so I’m happy we can make it happen. We used an app (Timeshifter) to prepare for the time change, so we were up…