Nagoya city gets a bad rap as just a fly by (or glide by on the Shinkansen) between Tokyo and Kyoto or Osaka, but the truth is Nagoya is quite an interesting city if you take time to explore it. For the most part, tourists are most familiar with Nagoya Castle, an expansive castle of…
Category: Architecture
Tokyo Design Week
Today (Oct 26, 2016) is the Opening Day for the annual Tokyo Design Week, held in Meiji Jingu Gaien (not to be confused with Meiji Jingu shrine, which is in Yoyogi Park). Hundreds of designers from university students to celebrated professionals display their work, host discussions and party like only design folks can. Pecha Kucha…
Hayashi Fumiko Memorial Hall
Hayashi Fumiko was a famous author who lived in Tokyo in the mid-20th century. Her and her husband Ryokubin, a painter, built this beautiful house in the Ochiai area in northwest Shinjuku surrounded by a small but lovely traditional Japanese garden. Their house was actually two buildings due to building restrictions around the war time,…
Kyu Asakura House
Uppity Daikanyama is known more to be the home of the modern rich and famous, but 100 years ago, it was also home to Asakura Torajiro, a politician and businessman of Tokyo. The large two-story house sits in the middle of a beautiful Japanese garden, all of which is hidden behind a very modern shopping…
Nakagin Capsule Tower
The Nakagin Capsule Tower is probably what many people envision when they think of modern Tokyo: a sort of space-age but utilitarian building stacked high into the sky. In truth, this building is the one and only of its kind in Tokyo or anywhere else, and unless you consider 1972 the peak of modern Japan,…
House Vision
Architecture poses a unique puzzle for Japan with the perfect storm of scarcity of natural resources, the premium value of land in urban areas, and a dwindling population. This is why many of Japan’s most prominent architects are on the cutting edge of ideas like using recycled materials for building projects, optimizing space in tiny…
Tohoku Week – Yamadera
Editors Note: We’re back from vacation and celebrating with a week of posts about our vacation destination: Tohoku! Beat the summer heat of Tokyo and the wall-to-wall crowds of Kyoto and visit Tohoku in northern Japan instead! Located just a half hour outside of Yamagata city in the Prefecture of the same name, Yamadera literally means…
Engaku-ji
Though not exactly a hidden gem in the popular tourist destination of Kamakura, this major Zen Buddhist temple is not as crowded as Kōtoku-in, home of the Giant Buddha. This is partly due to the fact that Engaku-ji is located just outside Kita-Kamakura station, one stop from the more popular Kamakura station. Still, Engaku-ji is…
Miraikan
Miraikan, also known the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (probably why people call it “Miraikan”), is located on the man-made island of Odaiba in Tokyo Bay. Suspended above the entry hall is the Geo-Cosmos, a one-of-a-kind globe covered with OLED panels that displays real time weather patterns and other important geographic data. Miraikan is…
National Art Center
One of Tokyo’s modern architectural masterpieces, the National Art Center in Roppongi is best known for its huge front facade resembling a huge glass wave. To most people’s surprise, it is not a museum, but a space for hosting temporary exhibitions of art. Many important exhibitions of historic artists as well as contemporary designers (like Issey…
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