Traversing Tokyo: Cafe Culture In West Tokyo

With millennial culture taking over, there has been a huge rise in the cafe and art of coffee. In fact, in true generational style, Dan and I are considering setting up ‘coffee shop’ on our return to the UK (whenever that will be…) As the worlds largest city, in is therefore no surprise that Tokyo…

Goodbye Shimonoseki!

As my JET programme contract ended on the 31st July 2018, the time has come to say goodbye to Shimonoseki. Fortunately, ALTs like to leave in style, and so there have been a few enjoyable trips and gatherings to mark our time in Yamaguchi. Firstly, we visited Karato fish market for some top notch sushi…

Laced Coffee

We recently hired a car to take a final road trip around Shimonoseki. We had plans to visit the 1,000 year old tree and bask in it’s ancient glory. The tree was dramatic and rather sizable. We travelled with Kate and Joe who have seen the tree before but were keen to visit it one…

Okayama Super GT and Jeans for Days

At the start of April, we took a long weekend trip to Okayama to enjoy the Japanese car racing, Super GT 300 and 500. The Japanese are crazy for this series, which features mainly Japanese cars and drivers. Our trip started on the Friday morning. We hopped on the Shinkansen and sped our way up…

The Bright City Lights

Dan and I live close to the large city of Fukuoka, with  a booming population of 1.5 million. We are pretty lucky as we can hop on a bus near my main school and arrive in Fukuoka just over an hour later.  So, we frequently do… This valentines / just another day to make the…

Coffee Tour Kokura

As we have already established, Dan loves coffee. So, one sunny weekend at the start of the glorious spring season in Japan, we took to Kokura to have a little coffee tour. We started out taking a 1 hour trek through suburbs, past factories, down back allies, to find coffee shop number one. It sat…

Kagoshima and Coffee

Our long weekend trip to Kagoshima was full of relaxation and coffee shop discovery, as usual! We enjoyed the charismatic streets of Kagoshima. Little alleyways you could meander down and find a nice restaurant or cool bar.  We visited several places with no information on the outside, but inside we found colourful spaces and eclectic…

Akiyoshidi Winter Wonderland

To fight those January blues we have been trip planning. It is certain death for the savings, but for the life experience, totally worth it! Before we depart Yamaguchi Prefecture in July, we have decided to check out some of its hot tourist destinations. The first on the list…Akiyoshidi Plateau and Cave. We decided on…

New Beach-front Cafe in Ayaragi!

Our local area is in the process of having a face-lift. It used to be an area of social housing, but in the past ten years big changes have taken place there. The social housing lives on amongst the new builds of big family homes. We arrived nearing the end of the changes, as our…

Pre-Roasted Coffee Delights

Dan is a master at finding great coffee shops. On our weekend trip to Kumamoto he did not disappoint, as he found his most unusual and delicious yet! There is a unique coffee shop in Kumamoto city that has been in operation for about 50 years with the same delightful barista. In this coffee shop…