I couldn’t believe it when I saw the news today that Akebono had died (see First foreign-born sumo grand champion Akebono dies at 54 and OBITUARY | Akebono, a Former Sumo Grand Champion, Dies at 54). Although sumo rikishi often don’t live to the sorts of ages that we have come to expect these days,…
Category: Novel
Cruises and COVID-19
Yesterday I wrote about some of the changes that I am making to Japan: The Basics as I work on the update to a second edition. I mentioned in that post how the new edition will cover Japan’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That reminded me about a post that I had been planning to…
Favourite Places in Japan: Nagoya
Continuing with my posts about my favourite places in Japan, I’m going to write about Nagoya. On the face of it, Nagoya, especially given its size (Japan’s fourth largest city with a population of over 2 million) is a rather unremarkable city. It doesn’t offer the variety of things for tourists that many smaller cities…
“The Evaporated” Podcast – Not Your Typical Podcast
As noted before, I have been listening to a number of podcasts in recent years with my favourites being Let’s Jaws For A Minute, The Death Studies Podcast, Take To The Sky, Uncanny Japan, Cincinnater, Blades Pod, and 80sography. About half relate to my academic work and research, while the other half relate to my…
Death Studies Podcast – A Brilliant Podcast That’s About Much More Than Death
As noted in my post ‘The “Uncanny Japan” Podcast and Culture Shock‘, over the last couple of years I have been listening to many more podcasts and have even appeared on some (for example, Voices in Japanese Studies, the Compounding Curiosity Podcast talking about my research on the shinkansen, the Fandomentals Podcast talking about Japanese…
12 August – A Key Date in the Year
Today seems like an appropriate day to come back from over a month’s break from writing blog posts and using social media (other than responding to a few tagged posts, for example). When making plans for the next year, we all have dates that we check to see what day they fall on, or block…
Book Review: “Impossible” by Sarah Lotz
Doing a review for this book that does it just is, well… impossible. How I would love to stop my review there, but Amazon and other sites require a certain number of words, so I will endeavour to say more. One of the challenges with doing a review for Impossible (also know as The Impossible…
Favourite Places in Japan: Seto Ohashi
Continuing with my posts about my favourite places in Japan, I’m going to write a bit about Seto Ohashi (瀬戸大橋). Technically, I’m not sure whether it’s really a favourite place of mine, but it seemed easiest to place it with the other such posts. For, rather than a favourite place per se, it’s a place…
It’s The Journey, Not The Ending, That Counts
I have been planning on writing this post for a while now, but hadn’t found the right time to do so. A few things came together over the last week which meant that the time seems right. As noted in a number of posts – for example, most recently Being Prepared For An Accident –…
World Book Day – Like the Other 364 Days
Today is World Book Day, a day when we should celebrate books and many children will dress up as characters from favourite books. For me, World Book Day, is not that different to many other days of the year. My life is full of books. I have written before about the significant impact of movies/films…
Favourite Photos: Haneda Arrival at Dawn
On some days I just do a short post that primarily revolves around a favourite photo without much accompanying text. This picture was taken during as the plane I was on was about to arrive at Haneda Airport in January 2020. Little did I imagine that this would be my last trip to Japan for…
Favourite Photos: Oyodo River at Sunset
On some days I just do a short post that primarily revolves around a favourite photo without much accompanying text. This picture was taken during a trip to Japan in 2013. It is a view of the Oyodo River (王淀川) in Miyazaki (宮崎). The picture is one of a series of pictures that I took…
Christopher P. Hood 