Asia Travel Blog

Plenty to say about Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan. It is where the sacred Mount Fuji located, making Shizuoka a perfect spot for the beautiful Fuji-san photo picture hunting. It is also where the earliest cherry blossom ...

Here is another way of maximizing your travel adventure in expensive city like Tokyo, but still, you can minimize your travel cost. Getting around ...

Where to stay in Japan can be quite costly, especially when you are to travel to big cities like Tokyo. But not to worry. A hostel would be just the right choice to keep on going with your Japan travel plan, but ...

One way of telling whether you are a truly Japan lover or not is by measuring how deep your desire in eating fish or other kinds of seafood is. I am not making this up! In fact, this fact has made me from once not too fond of eating fish (not to mention raw fish) into a not a day without fish maniac! Let’s say that you are not a truly Japan lover yet, meaning that you are not a real fish eater yet. In that case, I strongly suggest you to visit the Yaizu Sakana (Fish) Center.

One reason why I love Japan very much is its food, don’t you?! But frankly, it took some time for me to finally like the Nihon shoku (J-food). I can still laugh at myself when I remember how I was first introduced to this. Me, together with 5 other Indonesian students to go to Japan on an exchange program, we were taken to this Japanese restaurant in Jakarta during a week pre-departure orientation. I had a friend named Nasir. When the meal set already served, he first started with the Miso shiru (Miso soup, you are not a J-food real lover if you don’t know this!). I can still picture his funny face right after he took the first sip off the soup bowl. Hahaha. But that was not all the surprises yet. There was this kind of sticky food made from soy bean and smelled…rather strange!

If you are on a budget travel in Japan and feeling like enjoying some luxurious facilities, do not worry, take a ferry. It would be a wonderful experience. Well, just like in other countries, some of the ferries serving domestic routes in Japan are old. It is important then for you to do a little check before you go. Unfortunately, I’ve done some checking with the Japanese ferry operator websites, but most of them are available in Japanese only.

If you are a big fan of Japan travel and Kyoto can longer satisfy your travel lust of Japan’s old cities, Hagi Town might be the next alternative. No wonder this small little town is called Little Kyoto, everything is old and more importantly, they are becoming older but preserved. I was just an ordinary exchange student mixed with other Japanese school students when I first step foot in Hagi Town, a well renowned tourism spot located in Yamaguchi Prefecture. We were there for a school trip, which is a regular event in every Japanese school to have every year, from elementary school to a high school.

Traveling around enjoying beautiful nature’s scene and eating the local food is something ordinary when you are on vocation in foreign tourism country. But coming all the way as a tourist only to get in a bathing ritual, this is extra ordinary!