March, 2010
Inokashira Park is a really beautiful park located in the west of Tokyo which is not as popular among tourists as other parks like Yoyogi or Shinjuku Gyoen. Many times I prefer to come to Inokashira because it’s much more quiet and some parts have a nice Japanese style touch. Inokashira Park belonged to the [...]
Wasabi is a very popular Japanese culinary ingredient. It is of greenish color and you usually eat it as a paste/sauce to accompany raw fish plates. Maybe it is so well known because it’s very hot, although its spiciness is quite peculiar and it doesn’t stay on the tongue, but rather “goes up” straight to [...]
The National Art Center, Tokyo is one of the newest museums in town, it opened three years ago. The temporary exhibitions are usually pretty good; however the museum is worth the visit simply to enjoy the interior architecture of the building. The National Art Center, Tokyo is located in Roppongi near Tokyo Midtown; you can [...]
In January I had the opportunity to revisit Singapore for work; I had been there before as a tourist in 2008. This time I met many businessmen, investors, programmers and hackers that introduced me to the start-up and innovation world in Singapore. I will tell you some of the stuff I learned. With only five [...]
A new trend is emerging in Harajuku, a neighborhood where you can frequently find many of the urban tribes in Tokyo. The new trend is brought by a new urban tribe auto denominated: “skirt men” (スカート男子). There are still not many men wearing skirts but there are already two shops specialized in skirts for men. [...]
Motoi Yamamoto is a Japanese artist that uses salt as the main material to create his artworks. In Asia, salt is a symbol of purification; for example, in Japan small plates with salt are usually placed at the entrance of restaurants to protect them against evil spirits. Salt is also used in Shintoist rituals and [...]
Do you think that Sanyo’s only business is to build electronic devices? They also build houses! It still surprises me how many different things can big Japanese corporations do. Did you know that Sony sells life insurances or that Mitsubishi apart from cars also sells pencils? Is it better to diversify so much or is [...]
Mexican businessman Carlos Slim has recently been ranked by Forbes magazine as the richest person in the world. In Japan the richest person is Hiroshi Yamauchi, the ex-president of Nintendo, who transformed a small company dedicated to the hanafuda (traditional Japanese card game) card-making business into the biggest video game empire in the world. At [...]
