It’s been over a year now since we started traveling around Japan again in earnest, with August 2022 being a big month for trips that took us to Aomori, Kobe, Tottori, and Osaka, all cities that I’ve covered to one degree or another in posts and galleries here or freelance articles off-site. Kobe, I’m afraid, got the short end of the stick, and it’s not the only place that’s slipped through the cracks in a year of renewed travel writing.
Over the months, as we’ve visited them, I’ve also written to varying degrees about places in Kyoto, Yokohama and Kamakura (both in Kanagawa Prefecture), Nagoya (where the Studio Ghibli theme park is located), Chiba (where Nokogiriyama and Tokyo Disneyland are located), and of course, Shizuoka (where Mount Fuji and Azusa’s hometown, Fujinomiya, are located).
That’s a lot of place names, but for this year-in-review post, I’ve whittled down the focus to four, and I’m going to limit it to new, overlooked sights that I never found time to spotlight anywhere else in the year between August 2022 and August 2023. At the end, I’ll also share a little work-related status update for Labor Day weekend.
1. The Kobe Nunobiki Herb Gardens & Ropeway
Naturally, when we visited Kobe last August, our first order of business was to eat Kobe beef. We did it at a teppanyaki steakhouse called Wakkoqu in Shin-Kobe. It’s right near the entrance to the Kobe Nunobiki Herb Gardens & Ropeway (which used to be known more simply as the Shin-Kobe Ropeway, since it’s close to the station of that name).
The ropeway offers a stunning view as it takes you up past city buildings to a mountain where seasonal flowers bloom at the middle station. When we were there, sunflowers were in bloom. At the top, an observation deck awaits you with the titular herb gardens.
2. Kitano-cho and Chinatown (Nankinmachi)
After the ropeway, we spent some time walking around Kobe’s Kitano-cho neighborhood, where diplomats and merchants settled in Western-style mansions after Japan’s ports opened to foreign trade with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Some of these mansions, referred to as Ijinkan, now function as museums. We eventually found ourselves walking up the hill to Uroko House, said to be the original Ijinkan in the area. Its name, which means “House of the Scales,” stems from its scaly slate exterior. Out front, there’s a statue of a boar whose snout visitors rub for good luck.
Kobe’s foreign influences can also be felt in its Chinatown—called Nankinmachi after China’s one-time capital, Nanjing. This was the last of Japan’s three Chinatowns for me to visit, the other two being in Yokohama and Nagasaki. As night fell, we ventured in and ate some kakuniman (steamed pork buns) and wonton char siu noodle soup in the central plaza before heading back to our hotel.
3. The Kobe Meriken Park Oriental Hotel
In Kobe, we stayed at the Meriken Park Oriental Hotel, which is right behind the “Be Kobe” monument and within walking distance of the Port of Kobe Earthquake Memorial. The shape and design of the hotel building are meant to evoke a white wave rising out of the ocean. International cruise ships dock at the wharf next to it, which historically helped make Kobe into the port city it is today.
Our room had a balcony with a west view of the Mosaic Ferris wheel and mall. It was beautiful at night, when you could see ships sailing into the harbor. The only disappointing thing was that the nearby Kobe Port Tower was closed for renovations. They had projection mapping on the side of it, however, and it will be reopening in a new and improved form next year. That’s just added incentive to make another trip to Kobe. (This was my second).
4. Mel’s Drive-In at Universal Studios Japan
American Graffiti turned 50 last month, and when we visited Universal Studios Japan for the first time last December, I had a chance to grab a milkshake at Mel’s Drive-In at the end of the night. The original Mel’s Drive-In in San Francisco, which George Lucas used as a filming location, underwent demolition in 1976, just three years after the movie’s release.
In the mid-1980s, the real Mel’s son revived the restaurant on Lombard Street, “the crookedest street in the world,” in San Francisco. Now, it’s a small chain with multiple locations across Northern and Southern California, along with multiple recreations in Universal theme parks around the world (car hops not included). Still no branch in Modesto, though, where Lucas grew up and where American Graffiti is set.
5. Osaka’s Namba Yasaka Shrine
Before we embarked on our Anthony Bourdain food tour of Namba, Osaka, this unique shrine served as our first Kansai shrine visit of 2023. The gaping maw of its lion’s-head stage is just one of the many oversized heads we saw in Namba, with Daruma Minister, the mascot of the Kushikatsu Daruma chain, being another prominent example. Per GaijinPot Travel, the mouth of the lion is believed to swallow up evil spirits, while the shrine itself is dedicated to the guardian of the entire Namba area.
What really sticks with me about Namba Yasaka Shrine, besides its offbeat nature, is just how turned around we got trying to find it on the streets of Osaka. Google Maps has been finking out on me lately, and it’s this place that I was thinking about more than any other when I wrote for Explore about downloading offline Google Maps so you don’t run into the same trouble.
6. Jurassic Park: The Ride
Another movie that hit a new anniversary milestone this year is Jurassic Park, which turned 30 back in June. In January of this year, when we made our second trip to Universal Studios Japan, we donned ride ponchos and were seated at the front of the boat for Jurassic Park: The Ride. (The seats of our pants still got soaked, which is always fun.)
This attraction still exists at Islands of Adventure in Florida, but the one at Universal Studios Hollywood has been rethemed to Jurassic World. Beginning tomorrow, USJ’s version will be closed indefinitely, with some reports suggesting it could undergo a revamp to become a Jurassic World ride, too.
On the ride, you’d see a dino crane its towering neck in the Ultrasaur Lagoon before your boat headed into Stegosaur Springs and the Hadrosaur Cove, then inside the building for a T-Rex encounter. Photography was discouraged for that last part since it came right before the boat took a plunge and everybody got splashed. However, in the gift shop, you could take your time framing the perfect snapshot of a caged velociraptor. And you should still be able to see a T-Rex skeleton in the Jurassic Park area’s Discovery Restaurant, which has an authentic-looking movie jeep parked outside.
7. Characters at Tokyo Disneyland
This may verge on theme park overkill, but last week, I had another Explore article go up about “New Exclusive Attractions Disney Fans Can Only Find in Tokyo.” Technically, though, Tokyo Disneyland is located outside the city limits in Chiba Prefecture. The article covers two rides, two shows, and a parade. It also mentions the new character greeting spot, Minnie’s Style Studio, but I didn’t have room for it on the list.
This one’s for my sister, who’s always sending me pictures of her and my parents with Disney World characters back home in Florida. When we visited Tokyo Disneyland for its 40th-anniversary event in June, it had finally done away with the social distancing for characters, so they could get right up in your face, which happened to me with my dad’s favorite character, Goofy. Even Mickey Mouse himself was approachable (unlike last year when my family treated us to a Chef Mickey lunch and they had him set back behind a line of tape on the carpet).
8. Hyaku-shaku Kannon and the Big Stone Buddha
Back in July, when we went hiking on Nokogiriyama (“Sawtooth Mountain”) in Chiba, I did share a photo highlight of its Jigoku Nozoki (“View of Hell”). I also mentioned the huge stone relief of the goddess of mercy there, but seeing is believing.
Both the Hyaku-shaku Kannon, as she’s known, and the Ishidaibutsu, or Big Stone Buddha, at nearby Nihon-ji Temple, are around 100 feet tall, give or take. The latter is also Japan’s largest rock-carved Buddha statue, according to ANA. We happened to visit it about a month after seeing the Great Buddha of Kamakura, and it was still impressive (maybe even more so, since I had already seen the one in Kamakura once before).
Note the size of the people relative to each statue in the pictures above. The Hyaku-shaku Kannon relief is carved in the ruins of a stone quarry right below Jigoku Nozoki.
9. Misty Mount Fuji
We’ve almost reached the mountaintop of this list, but Azusa and I didn’t make it quite that far when we climbed Mount Fuji via the Fujinomiya trail in Shizuoka Prefecture last month. She had been to the top of the mountain once before, but that was ten years ago and we’re both over 40 now. I had also never really climbed a mountain this high; our starting point at 2,400 meters was already higher than the top of Mount Takao. So, our objective this time was to just to break in our new hiking boots and make it up to the 7th station, around the halfway point between the 5th station (where the bus lets out) and the summit.
Along the way, the clouds rolled in, and we found ourselves hiking through the mist. Here, you can see some before and after pictures. I had almost forgotten that Fuji-san has a second crater, the flank volcano Mount Hoei, but we passed it on the way, and it might be easier to climb if you’re a novice like me and are looking for a more realistic goal. Next year, though it gets pretty crowded up there, we’ll try climbing all the way to the top of Mount Fuji. I’d also maybe like to try out the Yoshida Trail in neighboring Yamanashi Prefecture.
10. A New Writing Gig
When I dusted off my author page and started contributing to GaijinPot again in August 2022, little did I know that travel writing would become a semi-full-time gig for me within a year’s time. I did it there for six months and now I’m doing it four days a week for Explore, having transferred there from /Film this July. My last /Film article went up the day before the actors’ strike started in Hollywood, and I canceled most of my streaming subscriptions the next day. ‘Nuff said.
I still have at least one TV-centric Inverse article in the works, but in the meantime, I’ve been hitting the town in Tokyo and shifting into travel mode even more than before. Just this week, I spent the night in the cabin where the J-horror classic Ringu was filmed. (More about that in a future post.)
With travel-related articles, the writing and editing process is more slow-going, and it involves much more fact-checking on both ends, but that’s never a bad thing. This gig also has me learning about new places and travel tips and tricks through research. Does it make me a hack if I write about TikTok hacks? You tell me.
The internet is an ad-clogged SEO wasteland, but I’m doing my best to make my little corner of it readable while drawing on memories of places I’ve visited in America and Asia. When we passed through Denver International Airport in 2019, for instance, I didn’t know yet about all the conspiracy theories surrounding that airport (which it’s fully embraced, by the way). I only wish I had known so we could’ve seen the talking gargoyle Greg while he was still there.
“Mustang.” Photograph provided courtesy of Denver International Airport.
That’s why this is a good opportunity to refresh my knowledge and build up more knowledge of places in the U.S. — while sharing that knowledge with readers — so we can have a fuller experience when we come back and travel around there, too. Right now, I have a growing list of national parks and other destinations that could fill more than one dream vacation across America, like the road trip a friend and I once took from Portland, Oregon, down through California, to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon.
I don’t have good pictures of places like Memphis (where I briefly stopped off on my way back to Missouri from New Orleans circa 2006) or Dollywood (which my family used to visit with my grandparents when they were still alive and living in Tennessee). But now I’m curious to revisit them, and I’d especially love to show Azusa around New York, which I wrote about in my first published Explore article.
With screenwriters still on strike alongside the Screen Actors Guild, and mercenary media companies laying off film journalists left and right this year, I know I’m probably lucky to still make a living via writing. Not for nothing, but in Japan, Labor Day and Thanksgiving are combined into one November holiday: Labor Thanksgiving Day. Here’s hoping I still have paid writing endeavors to be thankful for come November.