January 2022– date –

【Do you think you say thank you enough?】 What about your thank you? My mother very often told me this when I was a kid. Even if it's minor stuff like asking to pass something on the table and forgetting to say thank you, she was naggin...

【Snowy mountains are really harsh】 Last week a logging company invited us to a mountain tour to see how trees are logged. While we were going up the mountain plowing through snow, a staff member talked a lot about the troubles they hav...

【We come to need hotels for another reason】 The COVID destroyed the bright future of the Japanese tourism industry. The number of foreign tourists to Japan was increasing year by year and exceeded 30 million in 2018, when the nationwid...

Snow has already been used as a renewable energy source here. Hokkaido, the northernmost part of Japan, is the largest producer of potato, onion, and rice in Japan, and snow is used to refrigerate those crops during storage.

As I wrote before, our home town is the mecca of wooden furniture, where we have the world's famous chair collector, Noritsugu Oda. The number of chairs in Oda Collection amounts to about 1350, including most of the world masterpiece chairs, of course!

【Have you been to roadside stations in Japan?】 This is one of the basics to enjoy a road trip in Japan, especially in Hokkaido: Make the best use of roadside stations. This transport infrastructure was born in around 1990. It's like re...

In the early 90's when I was a kid, the zoo was so boring and a little creepy. It was like a horror movie scene of Stephen King: there were few people; animals were deathly still; old and rusty attractions made a squeak (in the amusement area in the zoo). In 1995, the zoo took the first step to the great comeback by the inauguration of a new director.

【The COVID struck a final blow to the world logistics】 Somewhere in countryside in early morning, a boy on a bicycle is throwing a newspaper to a front porch house-to-house. I'm sure you've watched such a scene in some Hollywood movies...