I’m back! This time around, I’ve got a rare treat for you. Yabusame or what I would call badass horseback archery. This is not something you can just find in some tourist guidebook on the internet. If it weren’t for Toshi’s many contacts and their good will, we wouldn’t have even heard of yabusame in…
Who would have expected a Mammoth? If you did, 10 points to Gryffindor！ No but seriously, in 1969 they found a huge fossil as an agricultural road was being constructed. Soon a mammoth of type Naumann Elephant was excavated, a museum plus park were built, and Churui gained some prehistoric street cred. I found out…
Are you perhaps looking for long lasting quality goods with a story to tell? Antiques, bargains, and the sweet feeling of a lingering treasure around each corner. All these things can be found in Japan’s recycle shops. While you wouldn’t even enter most western antique shops, because of hefty prices, Japanese recycle shops are different….
Welcome to my post. This one’s for all the Riichi Mahjong fans out there. From my own research, I have found that information on the acquisition and treatment of Japanese Mahjong sets is extremely scarce. Particularly, if you’re looking for those juicy green tiles, which you might have grown fond of because of legendary shows…
Hey again and welcome to what’s going to be my last post featuring Sophia Farm. Buckle in, this one’s gonna be a long one. My time at Sophia farm has now officially ended and it was definitely a great time with awesome people. I don’t think my ties with them will ever be cut, especially…
Welcome back to my second post on my stay at Sophia Farm. Starting out this time, I thought maybe I should give you a short overview of the people that I had the pleasure of working with during my time there. We’ll start with the people who have been there for the longest time and…
This time around I will give you a bunch of updates regarding my stay at Sophia Farm, a bio-dynamic farm in the mountains of east Hokkaido. Bio-dynamic farms are also called Demeter farms and follow the system, which was invented by Rudolph Steiner, the founding father of Anthroposophy. I set out to visit this particular…
After checking out two tiny houses there was still plenty of time to explore this small remote city. Since Kondo-san grew up here, he was happy to show us around. First he showed us where the best onsen (hot spring) and sentou (public bathhouse) were supposed to be – they were closed unfortunately. Next we…
Since I am working towards living a self-sufficient life in nature, I was surprised to hear that there was a tiny house company close by. The company is called KOYA Lab and it’s based in Honbetsu, only about a one-hour drive away from Memuro. Toshi and Kondo-san, whose parents actually live in Honbetsu, drove me…
