Let Nothing You Dismay: Some Memories of Christmas in Japan
Toward the end of each year as the trees are shrugging off their russet cloaks, to those who are susceptible, the peculiar tingling of Christmas’s magic once again makes itself known.
Richard Koyama-Daniels
15 articles
Articles by Richard Koyama-Daniels
A Drinker’s Guide to Drinking in Tokyo
I take to the streets of Tokyo to seek succor amidst the 847 square miles of the world’s biggest and most bewildering metropolitan booze-up.
Great Lakes: The Best Vegan Burgers in Tokyo
To hell with cutlery; sometimes a person just wants to grab hold of something chunky and tasty, and deliver it, posthaste, to their soon-to-be-satisfied face. Like kicking off your shoes to feel the ground beneath your feet, there’s catharsis to...
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East of the Eastern Capital
Hachiko waiting, decade after decade, as ever-denser Shibuya Station crowds are swept across the scramble under booming digital displays. Shinjuku’s pulse-quickening 24-hour streets, where the stars are outshone by a high-rise haze of hoardings ablaze with temptation. The refined highs...
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Tokyo Vegan Guide: Best Eats, Hard Truths, and Hidden Gems
Without the hard-won home-cooking skills required to rustle up, on occasion, a plate of semi-palatable food for myself, it’s doubtful that I’d be the well-rounded (physically, at least) middle-aged man that I am today. Relying on outside sources for sustenance...
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An End-of-Year Walk from Meiji Shrine to Sensoji Temple
A visit to a likely-heaving (Buddhist) temple to see out the old year (when the 108 worldly desires of attendees are, helpfully, sent packing by the corresponding number of strikes of a bell), and a New Year’s Day excursion to...
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Broadcasting History: An Autumn Afternoon Walk from Tokyo Skytree to Tokyo Tower
It is early November and the Tokyo weather has taken an abrupt, and somewhat overdue, turn toward the autumnal. The skies are painted a cheerful eggshell blue, and a delightful hint of winter’s coming sting is carried on breezes that...
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Good Old Tokyo: Secondhand Shopping in Japan’s Well-Stocked Capital
I don’t particularly like new stuff. It makes me sad, for example, to think of factories churning out an ever-growing roster of festive tat, that, for the most part, will be unthinkingly binned the moment the season has been greeted,...
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The Voyapon Guide to Japanese Beer
I spent much of my time in Britain, in the latter half of the 1990s, hoisting kegs of real ale about, and then, wincing with trepidation (having witnessed the explosive consequences of any number of possible preparatory missteps), thwacking tiny...
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Joining the Dance: A Magical Bon Odori at Tsukiji’s Hongwanji Temple
Across many parts of the western world, the bitter gray tedium of winter is made just about bearable by the timely arrival of jolly old Christmas with its tinsel-draped rituals and sense of communal abandon. It is in a similar...
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An Inky-Fingered Pilgrimage: Visiting Three of Tokyo’s Top Art Supplies and Stationery Stores
As a boy in the early 1980s, I would spend many happy hours in the art supplies and stationery section of our local department store, standing in dazed and awed contemplation of the creative possibilities inherent in each of the...
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The Life, Work, and Kyoto Home of Celebrated Ceramicist Kanjiro Kawai
Just a short walk from the Gojo Bridge, site of the warrior-monk Benkei’s fateful 1,000th duel, there is a typically unassuming Kyoto side street that runs quietly between rows of two-story machiya houses. Here, amongst the tastefully subdued and organic...
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The Imposing and Contentious Architecture of Kyoto Tower
The charms of Kyoto, curated over centuries, are in such abundance that it can seem like an enchanted city. There are lifetimes of shrines and tranquil gardens, generations of craftspeople plying their timeless trades, and festively lantern-lit terraces which line...
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Universal Shapes: A Public Art Odyssey in Tokyo
The curvaceous and holey Henry Moores that dotted the landscape of my pre-Banksy UK youth, were to me, the face (and monolithic body) of British public art. Moore’s magnificent-but-ubiquitous abstractions of the female form seemed to multiply in the moonlight...
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A Time and a Place: 7 Artists Who Plotted a Course Through the Japanese 20th Century
Over the years, one of the least wasteful ways I have found to waste my time, has been to head off to an (almost) randomly chosen area of Tokyo and immerse myself in whichever I find of the city’s generous...
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