Nikka whisky

Japan isn’t renowned for its whisky, but actually it should be because the good stuff is very good indeed. These photos are from one of Nikka’s two distilleries in Japan - part of a travel story I was doing on the city of Sendai.

I think I could guess why Nikka chose the location for a distillery. Lake, misty hills, rain - about the nearest Japan gets to Scotland. The vending machines gave it away a bit though.

Note the shinto shimenawa on the pot stills. A shinto priest comes to bless the distillery every new year.

How to melt a Nikon

Nambu-tekki ironware, one of the shoots I did in Northern Japan last week.

Hot Hot Hot. I decided that August is NOT the ideal month to be taking photos of an iron foundry. I can’t imagine how the people who work there cope. Apart from anything they have to keep as much skin covered as possible to avoid being burnt by splashing iron.

Restaurants around the foundries serve extra salty ramen noodles to make up for all that lost sweat.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Writing this from a somewhat dingy hotel in Mizusawa, Northern Japan. Two stories this trip - one on Iwate ironware and one on Sendai whisky.

Bumped into Matsuo Basho yesterday, or rather his statue, at a temple in Hiraizumi. He penned a famous haiku in the town:

“The summer’s grass / is all that’s left / of ancient warriors’ dreams.”

Digital Hollywood

This is Tomo Sugiyama, the President of Digital Hollywood University; every inch the Japanese digital guru.

I interviewed him last week for a story on digital content (games, TV, cellphone content etc). Sugiyama was at MIT in the 1980s with Nicholas Negroponte, which is a pretty cool IT credential. When he came back to Japan he set up the university.They started off with 48 students and 25 Apple Macs. 3000 students now.

Interviewing Bando Tamasaburo

No pictures today because I was strictly on text duty. One of the biggest interviews I’ve done so far too.

Bando Tamasaburo is the greatest living Kabuki onnagata (male actor playing a female role) in Japan. See him in gorgeous action below.

I don’t normally get nervous before interviews, but there’s a difference between interviewing someone who is just famous, and someone who is famous and hugely talented. Luckily he was completely charming and thoughtful so I mainly had to concentrate on making my Japanese questions comprehensible and keeping the recorder running!

Tamasaburo started his kabuki career at the age of seven so I asked him whether living in that rarified world was ever difficult. He said something to the effect that oridinary life was the “strange” world for him.

I’ll upload the interview when it’s out (at least a few months).

Tokyo Tower

I stumbled across this guy (not literally, but almost!) on my way to a Tsukiji fish market shoot VERY early one morning. He was wearing a pretty nice suit, so not sure why he hadn’t found himself a capsule hotel.

Got as close as I could with the wide angle (which is closer than it looks from the photo). Luckily he didn’t wake up. Better to leave sleeping hungover salarimen lie!

Akihabara tour

More photos from “otaku Mecca” Akihabara. Last week I took a tour organized by a startup called GI Jane. I was surprised to see so many foreigners on the streets. I’m not sure where these guys were from (maybe Italy?) but they certainly looked the part.

I caught them outside the Radio Kaikan which is probably the most famous otaku department store in Akihabara.

They are obviously very strict with participants on the tours. Here are a list of things NOT to do when visiting Akihabara. I think I may have broken 1, 3, 5, and 6. Oops!

Obviously, the thing you absolutely do NOT want to do in Akihabara is eat the oden in a can. Oden is a fishy brothy kind of stew that stinks out convenience stores during the winter. In Akihabara its available from vending machines - chilled in Summer!

Vanishing Arctic Ice May Hurt Japan’s Wildlife, Tourism

My National Geographic News article about the Shiretoko drift-ice in Hokkaido has just gone online.  Two  photos in the gallery : )

“For decades the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido has attracted tourists hoping to step out onto drifting slabs of the world’s southernmost Arctic sea ice. Free-floating pieces of ice that form each winter in the Sea of Okhotsk travel about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) to Hokkaido’s Shiretoko Peninsula. The ice, which normally lingers near the coast for up to four months, is key to the region’s rich biodiversity, including many rare seabirds and marine mammals.

In recent years, however, the peninsula has seen noticeably less drift ice, raising fears that global warming is to blame . . .” [Read full article]

playing about on the drift-ice

drift-ice

hokkaido bear-meat curry!