I know a fair number of people follow this blog through feeds. I've set the feeds to give you the headline and the first paragraph of ea...

We're back. Borlänge-Osaka is a pretty long trip (22 hours, door to door) and I'm desperately fighting jetlag so I'm not going t...

Sometimes friends in Sweden ask for Japanese recipes. The problem with cooking much Japanese food in Sweden is the same as cooking Swedish f...

[We're travelling; a post from my old blog to keep things going here] Donburi (丼) is a Japanese rice dish. It means "rice bowl...

We're off. Finnair has a direct flight between Osaka and Helsinki, so we'll be staying in Helsinki for two nights, fly to Stockholm ...

There's a constant low-level political argument in Japan about "becoming a normal country". This is often trotted out as a par...

Asahi Shimbun notes that there is a real, serious and increasing nursing care - home care and daily life assistance especially - staff shor...