When in Japan, do as the Japanese do. You've heard the ever-popular saying. A seemingly easy feat, that is, unless you have never been to Japan! Let me share seven learnings we are glad to have been warned of as they certainly are important. Though far from the last of the learning's, I am sure. - Mastery of Chopsticks Our skills might be up to the challenge of picking up every grain of rice from your plate, there is a right and a wrong way. Crossing your cho...

Lovely cultural dinner out with Fushimi and lovely Aya. Starters (which was requested by the boys as cake - apple pie and banana loaf) was at our abode 5pm and we then all jumped into Fushimi's car and headed out 7pm - their treat; their choice, apology by our friends for arriving a little late. Not easy to accept, they gave us good heads up notice that they were running late! We headed down the road, not far from home to a cultural hot pot experience! We sat...

Tanabata Festival -July/Aug Tanabata (Star Festival) is celebrated around July 7th or August 7th in Japan. Tanabata is a Japanese tradition wherein people write their wishes on tanzaku papers (colorful, small strips of papers) and hang them on bamboo branches which are also decorated with colorful paper crafts. People also decorate bamboo branches with various kinds of paper decorations and place them outside their houses. You see many bamboo decorations set u...

Japan has one of the world's most extensive urban rail networks, composed of surface trains and subways that carry some 40 million passengers daily in Tokyo. Trains are undoubtedly the most convenient form of transportation in this concrete labyrinth. Caridges are crowded in the morning and evening commuter rush, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with passengers and even more unpleasant are the bizarre creatures that lurk on these trains. Let me explain these 10 Yōk...

This is new to South Africans, the giant cricket as I called it for weeks. He isn't dead, we found him lying outside our door this morning - and Ro will now help him to his feet! Cicadas (sɪˈkeɪdə/), alternatively spelled as Cicala. Prominent eyes, though not especially large, their wings are well-developed, with conspicuous veins. Cicadas live in temperate-to-tropical climates where they are among the most-widely recognized of all insects, mainly due to...