Kitchen to garden and back

Urban Tokyo is so crammed with people, concrete, electrical wires, train lines and bicycle parking that it takes som ingenuity and nerve to nurture green things in the tiny spaces in which you can put a pot or some soil. Last year Pingmag featured photos of guerilla gardening in Tokyo’s cramped streets. I’m out in the burbs [...]

A secret garden in Abiko City

春一番 haruichiban, the first winds of spring came to Japan this weekend. Saturday was remarkably warm, and  put away my scarf and enjoyed the sunshine. On Saturday morning, when we were passing the Abiko stationfront in bright sunshine, we saw the monument to Taisho Period artists, and my friend mentioned that some of the houses [...]

Extreme Recycling Japanese Style

Today, I dropped off my recycling stuff at カスミ柏中央店 Kasumi Kashiwa Central shop in the Chiyoda area of Kashiwa City. The supermarket takes back plastic and metal containers, the caps from PET plastic bottles and paper milk cartons. But I feel deceived – they do not take back all plastics marked 「プラ」. They only take [...]

クルクルクリーンかしわ Cycle Clean Kashiwa

Three years ago, Kashiwa City council started a commission into waste disposal, which also initiated a newsletter titled クルクルク ーンかしわ Cycle Clean Kashiwa. This February’s issue provides three useful bits of advice for the environmentally concious consumer. That’s my chopsticks case holding the latest issue down on the counter at a local noodle place.
First, when [...]

The Asama Volcano

Did you feel the long, rolling earthquake on Sunday morning, February 1st? That was a warning shot from 浅間山 Mount Asama, the volcano that straddles the Gunma-Nagano prefectural border. This video shows the volcano erupting early in the morning on February 2nd.
Although we only experienced shakes and no ash in Chiba Prefecture, some news reports showed  cars [...]

Gyoza Goya vs. Animal Hamaguchi! Live on TV!

Last week, I dropped by Gyoza Goya in Kashiwa for a late dinner. You know what a gyoza is? It’s a dumpling, something like a perogy, filled with just about anything you want, and either boiled or pan fried.  Gyoza Goya has an eclectic (eccentric?!) menu, including chocolate banana gyoza, apple pie gyoza, and The [...]

柏の葉 Green leaves Kashiwa

柏の葉 Kashiwa no Ha is that big, beautiful spread-out new industry and academic park that you pass through on your way from Ueno to Tsukuba on the new Tsukuba Express line (which has this silly English website) and is home to satellite campuses for both Tokyo University and Chiba University. The area was planned with lifestyle [...]