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Chris Bamforth
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 22, 2006
Mountain of dread
The stench of sulfur hits you long before you get off the bus. And when you do step off, it hits you all the stronger. Before you stretch the sickly, yellow-green waters of a caldera lake, whose acidity has expunged all fish life except for one hardy species (ugei or big-scaled redfin). Signs everywhere...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 24, 2006
Netted by the charms of fishy Kochi
Arched around the underbelly of Shikoku and following the great indentation of Tosa Bay carved into that island by the Pacific, Kochi Prefecture is one of those places over which a sense of isolation has long seemed to hang.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 27, 2006
Going by the book in Shikoku
A classic, once noted Mark Twain wryly, is what everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read. Thus, Japan has such grand works as the hefty 11th-century "Tale of Genji," which can claim universal respect, but relatively few readers.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 22, 2006
On a pathway to the divine
Since it acquired the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004, more people have naturally felt inclined to see the temples and monasteries of Koyasan in Wakayama Prefecture for themselves. But more than a few visitors to the complex find that its heavy Buddhist religiosity and the funereal gloom...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 25, 2006
Ainu culture in Hokkaido's Akan National Park
When Japan's Meiji Era (1868-1912) government concluded that the country had a manifest destiny to commence full-scale colonization of the hitherto barely developed northern island of Hokkaido, it set about the task assiduously.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 28, 2006
Window on the West
It's hard not to feel well disposed toward a place like Nagasaki even before you set foot in it. Nagasaki was, after all, the port in western Kyushu that had to bear the torturous brunt of the anti-Christian persecutions assiduously pursued by the Tokugawa shoguns in the 17th century. And had it not...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 9, 2006
Looking at Westerners' accounts of the salaryman blues
THE BLUE-EYED SALARYMAN by Niall Murtagh. Profile Books, 2006, 228 pp., £7.99 (paper). The phenomenon didn't start with Lafcadio Hearn, but in his day he became best known for it -- the foreigner who comes to Japan and writes a book about his experiences. His female contemporary, Isabella Bird, was...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 23, 2006
The garden of earthly delight
An air of seclusion still hangs over Shikoku. This is despite the building of Japan's greatest civil-engineering white elephants -- three grandiose and grandiosely debt-ridden bridge systems that span the Inland Sea and connect the island with Honshu.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 26, 2006
The capital delights of Nara
To visit Kyoto is often to experience what Oscar Wilde thought of Wagner's music -- beautiful moments, but bad quarters of an hour. The time spent soaking up the splendors of its temples and gardens seems slight at the side of those long bus rides getting there across a cityscape that goes out of its...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 28, 2006
Here be the land of the gods
You get them in research institutes, tucked away in small caves, perched atop spanking-new urban developments. Clamber up Mount Fuji and one is waiting there at the summit. Aside from desperately keen Shintoi aficionados, few people would complain that Japan suffers any dearth of shrines. While Shinto...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 16, 2006
Ring trilogy spirals past science fiction
RING, SPIRAL, LOOP, by Koji Suzuki. Vertical Publishing, 2003-2005, each $24.95 (cloth). One cinematic treat that 1998 turned out was "Ringu," which was the rarity of a well-worked, intelligent horror flick that won broad appeal among movie fans who ordinarily look askance at efforts in the horror genre....
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 31, 2006
Here's one castle to crow about
They may be unloved and unwanted, but even their detractors would have to admit that Japan's crows are tough, resilient critters. It is, then, entirely appropriate that the oldest castle in Japan should be named after these intimidating birds. The Japanese of yore had quite a fondness for naming their...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 24, 2006
You can't get too much snow up here
Glaciers are in retreat, global weather patterns are going haywire and the Earth's climate is the warmest it's been in a millennium. Nonetheless, every winter, as regular as clockwork, winds from Siberia howl across the Sea of Japan, siphon up moisture, and dump it on Hokkaido as some of the world's...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 27, 2006
A fortress to be reckoned with
From the soaring beeches in the forests of northern Honshu's Shirakami-Sanchi to the funereal Buddhist gloom of Koyasan in Wakayama Prefecture, those who let UNESCO be their guide will find no dearth of variety among Japan's World Heritage Sites.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 23, 2005
A slow dive into Ishigakijima
You quit the airport and drive along roads flanked with palm trees, past fields of tall sugar cane and stone-walled gardens bristling with red hibiscus flowers, and it's clear that you've arrived in a very different part of Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 25, 2005
Izu's Shimoda basks calmly in past glories
Jutting south from Mount Fuji into the Pacific, the Izu Peninsula has something of a holiday air about it. The warm Kuroshio current flowing northward lends the peninsula a mild climate, and its position close to the suture lines of shifting tectonic plates means that rugged Izu has no lack of geothermal...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 28, 2005
Journey to the end of the world
The name in Ainu means "the end of the Earth." And the bleakness and ruggedness of this lonely peninsula jutting out into the Sea of Okhotsk are such that little imagination is required as to how the Ainu -- the indigenous people of Hokkaido -- happened by the name of Shiretoko.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Sep 30, 2005
The taste of Tosa in Tokyo
Long before the ballyhooed construction in the 1980s and '90s of the three stupendous bridge systems linking Honshu with Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's main islands was by far the least visited. But despite the completion of those civil-engineering white elephants, Shikoku has pretty much remained...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 23, 2005
War and peace in Hiroshima
Before coming to Japan, most people don't know more than about half-a-dozen place names in the country. But one name certainly familiar to all is that of the largest city at the western end of Honshu.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 26, 2005
Visitors become statuesque in Kawagoe
Tokyo may be big, but it's not big on history. The city's most popular historical spot, Asakusa, is centered on Asakusa Kannon temple, and its main hall was built in 1958. Frank Lloyd Wright's sublime Imperial Hotel survived the onslaughts of the 1923 earthquake and 1945 fire bombing, but didn't survive...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

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