135 years of Japanese wine-making

I writing this from frigid December Bath in the UK. Brrrr. I think these photos are actually making me feel colder.

At the end of summer I travelled up to Katsunuma in Yamanashi prefecture. The area is home to Japan’s largest winemaker, Mercian, and 80 odd little wineries open for visiting and tasting. Katsunuma’s wine-making traditions [...]

Second class food?

Perhaps only Japan would have an event celebrating “2nd class food”? It’s probably something to do with the fact that even the fast food in Japan tends to be very good.

This year the B1 Grand Prix was held in Yokote-city up in Akita prefecture. B1 stands for B-Class Gourmet, foods like yakisoba, okonomiyaki, takoyaki, koroke [...]

The oldest city in Japan

For a notably low-key city, Fukuoka has a fair few superlatives to its name. It is Japan’s closest city to Korea which means it can lay claim to being Japan’s oldest city. In other words, it was the first beachhead of civilization from the Asian mainland.

These days Fukuoka has some of the strongest business links [...]

A hot assignment

Nambu Tekki ironware is a specialty of Iwate Prefecture in Northern Japan. I took these photos for a travel story last summer.

This is the oven where they heat the pots and give them a special anti-rust layer of oxidised metal. The technique dates back to the Edo period.

Nambu Tekki pots

This was also inside the foundry. [...]

Poland photos

Not Japan and not photojournalism per se, but I’ve been meaning to post these here for a while. The summer before last I visited Poland with my family and trusty GR1.

We were visiting my Polish relatives, but it was my first time to Poland since school. I was quite shocked at how little I really [...]

Karl Bengs: German-Japanese architecture

This story was on the way back from Niigata early spring this year. Karl Bengs is a German architect who first visited Japan in 1966. He buys old Japanese farmhouses, dismantles them then rebuilds them in his own distinctive style and with all mod cons (like proper insulation and heating).

This photo was taken in his [...]

Mr Tanaka's railway

My Rough Guide to Japan tells me that the Joetsu Shinkansen from Tokyo to Niigata was the most expensive train track in the world to build. It cost some 6 billion yen per kilometer and about one third of the journey is through tunnels.

Built by LDP pork-barrel legend Tanaka Kakuei, the bullet train line runs [...]

Brown's Field farm - an alternative lifestyle in Chiba

When home is a fifty-something square meter Tokyo shoe box and the daily commute is shared with thousands in the same predicament, it’s easy to forget there are other ways of living.

But photojournalist Everett Brown and macrobiotic cookbook writer Deco Nakajima remembered and did something about it. Brown’s Field is their remarkable and inspirational home.

Everett [...]

Sado Island

Sado ferry

Sado seems to be one of those places that everyone talks about going to but few actually get to. After 10 years in Japan this was my first trip to the island, on a story for an airline magazine.

First photos were on the ferry – a pretty chilly voyage as it was still mid [...]

The Seiko-Epson Micro Artist Studio

The Micro Artist Studio in Nagano prefecture is where Seiko-Epson make their Sonnerie luxury watch. I was up there for a story earlier this year.

Each Sonnnerie costs 15.7 million yen and is made from 630 parts over 12 months.  There are 12 “micro-artists” in the workshop but all the watches are assembled by this man:

Japanese [...]