清水寺（æ’州） If you haven’t been to your first temple of the new year yet, consider giving Kiyomizudera a try! And I don’t even mean the one in Kyoto, though that it also part of our pilgrimage.  Banshu Kiyomizu-dera, or “Kiyomizudera II†(as it is the second of that name on the pilgrimage) is temple 25…
Three months into my Japanese sojourn, a family connection led to my boarding a bus to Sakaide in Shikoku to stay with a Japanese family I had met just once before. I’ve hosted and been hosted a fair bit, but as with everything, Japan’s a little different.  Right from my arrival when we went straight…
Part of the reason I decided to start writing for the Times was to hold myself accountable for my beliefs. And I’m not ashamed to say that a huge obstacle lies between my proclaimed dedication to the art of sustainability and its practice: I’m a lazy bastard. Well, I guess I’m not that lazy. I fill…
The Kobe Prefectural Museum of Art is a modern and contemporary art museum located in the heart of Kobe just minutes away from Sannomiya Station. It was built in 1995, and was part of the rebuilding project following the Great Hanshin Earthquake. It features over 8,000 works of art from Hyogo artist and artists around…
This is a simple Japanese soup which is served at New Year’s celebrations. Ingredients (serves 4) one pack of kamaboko (steamed fish paste) ¼ bunch of mizuna (green leafy vegetable) a little daikon (Japanese radish) ½ carrot a little spring onion 4 mochi (rice cakes) zest from one yuzu (Japanese lemon/lime) 3 ½ cups of…
MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR Happy New Year,　明ã‘ã¾ã—ã¦ãŠã‚ã§ã¨ã†ã”ã–ã„ã¾ã™and so on and so forth. Welcome to the first Hyogo Times of 2013. First up, I guess we all have to accept that the Mayans messed up somewhere in their calculations. Clearly there can be no other explanation for the fact that the world is still turning and…
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I was going to write a nice entry about the snakes found in and around Japan given we’ve just entered 巳年（ã¿ã©ã—; midoshi）, okay, not if you’re on the Chinese calendar proper, but we’re not in China, so meh. Then I remembered that snakes freak me out a bit. I started looking at pictures and information,…