Japan Travel in the Know– category –

Have you ever seen "jewelry ice?" It is completely different from drift ice, made of not sea water but fresh water, and so, it's highly transparent like a diamond. River water turns into ice on the surface at river mouth, and the ice pieces, before getting washed ashore, drift in the sea for a while, get rounded off, and are more brightly polished. According to Wikipedia, this natural phenomenon occurs only along the coast of a small town in Hokkaido even in all the wide world.

The king of mashrooms in Japan is definitely pine mushrooms, Matsutake in Japanese. They are very expensive, like about 300 USD for one piece, but funnily enough, it's not popular at all outside Japan. Let's see the long history of eating mushrooms in Japan.

Fascination and awe for fire. We have such slightly conflicting emotions probably because that should be the optimal condition for survival, but now we can fully satisfy our feelings of fascination for fire under a safe environment here in Hokkaido.

Hokkaido is famous for delicious seafood like sushi and sashimi because it's surrounded by the bountiful sea. My hometown Asahikawa is located in the very middle of Hokkaido, surrounded by mountains, far away from the sea, but you can have the best sushi because the town is the central distribution base of Hokkaido.

The number of deer has increased up to about 700,000 in Hokkaido, Japan, which causes problems such as car accidents and deforestation. About 100,000 deer are hunted every year, but that's not enough to stop them from increasing too many. There are many good restaurants serving deer meat dishes here. Let's eat more!

Do you know how big the world's largest planetarium is? It's 35 m in diameter, and is located in Nagoya, Japan. Why don't you come and try one in the Mecca of planetarium? You may think there's no point of going to the planetarium when you come all the way to Japan, but planetarium shows are designed based on stars seen in the local sky. It's also something you can only experience here.

Have you ever seen a Japanese elementary school bag? It's nationally-standardized in Japan. I'll tell you how Hokkaido kids use the bags to make an ice igloo.

Do you think you can tell good rice from not-so-good one? If you think "Rice is just a foil to the main dish, and there is not much of a difference," that's completely wrong. Today, I'm going to introduce a restaurant famous for good rice in Hokkaido.

If you wanna eat the best bread in Japan, you need to come to Hokkaido because it is the kingdom of the agricultural (wheat) and dairy (milk) industries in Japan. There are many well-known bakeries, and one of the major groups is bakeries opened by bakers breaking away from Maison Kayser.

I've been traveling around the world and staying in many hotels, though most of them were cheap ones. In my experience, Japanese budget hotels are best in cost performance.