Harrowing, haunting, thought-provoking and emotional – just a few of the adjectives that could be used to describe today. The main emotion though was untrammelled anger – anger at the people who made the decision to drop the first A-bomb over Hiroshima. The devastation and suffering it caused to civilians can not in any way be justified and seeing some of...
The gate (torii) of Itsukushima Shrine is perhaps one of the most iconic views of Japan. The red gate to the shrine appears to float serenely on the water looking like a magical entrance to another land. In a sense it is another land as the island of Miyajima (known also as Itsukushima) has shrines almost littered around the landscape – some hovering over the...
Takayama is an oddity within Japan. The city takes up a larger area than Tokyo – a total of over 2,000 square kilometres and yet it only has a population of just over 88,000 compared to 14 million people in Tokyo. This gives it the lowest population density of any city in Japan. This quirk perhaps stems from the fact that Takayama is quite high in the Japanese...