Author Archives: joostay

Blackout over Lembangon

August 13, 2013 by joostay

The smell of a mosquito coil is unmistakable. I must be passing a shop or someone’s house. I can’t tell. It’s pitch black. As I pass an alleyway I squint to see a pair of eyes peering back at me, the glow of a cigarette burning brighter as he or she takes a long, deep drag. Further down the street the headlights of a dozen mopeds dance in symphony like fireflies, swerving back and forth back and forth to avoid […]

Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: backpacking, bali, blackout, electric, lembongan, nusa, power, satay, south east asia, street food, travel

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Smiling with the Indonesian artists of tomorrow

August 12, 2013 by joostay

Travel with a smile and the whole world smiles with you… OK, brace yourself. I’m about to say something extremely cheesy so please bear with me. Someone once asked me what the most important thing was to pack when going to Asia. I simply replied, “a smile.” Cheesy or not, I still stand by it. It goes for whatever country you visit. Body language is universal. I can’t speak Burmese but in the past I’ve been beckoned over to eat […]

Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: art, backpacking, bali, experiences, guidebook, indonesia, sanur, smile, south east asia, travel

Global Domination. Sort of.

August 9, 2013 by joostay

Supper in Tokyo. Breakfast in Kuala Lumpur. Lunch in Jakarta. Dinner in Bali. When I was still a wee lad in short trousers I remember my grandparents telling me that in ‘their day’ a ‘holiday’ meant taking the suicide-inducing local train from Belfast to Bangor for the afternoon. That’s a 30-minute journey. 14 miles. To eat a poke (that’s an ice cream to you and me), dunk their feet in the paddling pool and then go home again. I don’t […]

Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: bali, bangor, beach, belfast, indonesia, japan, java, kuala lumpur, malaysia, northern ireland, south east asia, sun, tokyo, train, travel

Takuhiro’s shoes

July 22, 2013 by joostay

Me? You want to know about me? I dunno. What do you want me to tell you? Well, I’m Takuhiro. I’m from Kajicho. It’s in Kanda. Do you know Kanda? They have a famous festival there every year. It’s very traditional. But I guess my area is all office blocks now. There isn’t much to see. I’ve lived in the same house all my life. I’m nearly 50 now. Can you believe that!? My wife and I live with with […]

Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo • Tags: asia, dancers, harajuku, japan, lebels, music, park, rockabilly, strangers, sunday, tokyo, travel, yoyogi, yoyogi park

Home is where you lay your head…

July 19, 2013 by joostay

Right now I’m looking into arranging a homestay in rural Bali. It got me thinking of some of the amazing (and not so amazing) places I’ve stayed over the years… 1. Primary Rainforest – Borneo Three hours from civilization in a 4×4 lies Borneo Rainforest Lodge, a spectacular resort buried deep in the Danum Valley Conservation Area – 438 square kilometres of relatively undisturbed lowland dipterocarp forest in Sabah, Malaysia. Indulgent luxury, each room with its own outdoor hot tub […]

Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: asia, borneo, chunking mansions, danum valley, deer farm, hong kong, hotel, japan, malaysia, milford sound, nature, new zealand, rainforest, rainforest lodge, san francisco, tenderloin, tokyo, travel

Summer Plans: Bali & beyond

July 8, 2013 by joostay

I’ve been in Japan 16 months now and I’m grateful for the opportunities living here has given me. In that time I’ve been to Taiwan twice, watched the sun set over the Temples of Bagan in Myanmar, drank moonshine in my friend’s apartment in Bangkok and next month I’m off to explore Bali. Time/cash permitting I’d also love to hit the Philippines before the end of the year. In August I’ll also be visiting Nagoya for the first time for […]

Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: bali, food, holidays, indonesia, japan, south east asia, summer, tokyo, travel, ubud, vacation

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Todoroki: the lost art of keeping a secret

June 30, 2013 by joostay

Brush past spider webs and dusty shrines and immerse yourself in Tokyo’s best kept secret. As I stand motionless in a trance watching a spider hypnotically spin its web I’m hit by an odd sensation. Absolute nothingness. I can’t hear Tokyo. I close my eyes and instead feel the sound of water splashing against rocks and nature breathing peacefully. Not to sound like a hippy, but Todoroki truly is a special place. It’s the only natural gorge left in Tokyo, […]

Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo • Tags: commute, gorge, hiking, japan, metro, nature, shrine, station, subway, temple, todoroki, tokyo, train, travel, valley, Zen

Raindrops

June 13, 2013 by joostay

Because the mind is free – Listening to the rain Dripping from the eaves, The drops become One with me.

Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo • Tags: art, asia, beauty, culture, dark, drawing, guidebook, japan, rain, sun, tokyo, train, travel, weather

Beauty in grimness

June 3, 2013 by joostay

Nature entangled in concrete. Opaque skies. Silence. Every Thursday I make the trip to Saitama to hang out with the crows and the lonely vending machine who hasn’t been touched in years. He’s OK though. Content in stillness. The clouds above are grey, the roads below the same. A rusty beer tin hides in the verge, watching the people who pass him by day, after day, after day. No one notices him. The train station is unmanned, the bus stop […]

Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo • Tags: asia, brian eno, crows, dull, grim, happy, inaka, japan, music, saitama, tokyo

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Spirited Away in Jiufen, Taiwan

June 1, 2013 by joostay

A visit to Taiwan’s Jiufen – the real-world inspiration for Ghibli’s Spirited Away Few animation studios have been as consistent as Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. Founded in 1985, its animated fantasies are made with just the right blend of humour, melancholy and surrealism to make them appeal to audiences of all ages. . The official Ghibli Museum is actually only 25 minutes from my house in Tokyo, but I still haven’t been. Ironically it took me to fly 1,500 miles to […]

Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: asia, Chihiro, Ghibli, guidebook, Hayao Miyazaki, Jiufen, mountain, Spirited Away, Studio, Taipei, Taiwan, tokyo

BOARDS OF CANADA TOKYO TRANSMISSION

May 22, 2013 by joostay

May 22nd 2103 24:00 @ 1-23-10 Jinnan Shibuya-ku Tokyo IKIMASHO! was the first website worldwide to showcase Boards of Canada’s Tokyo Transmission.

Categories: Art, Music & Culture • Tags: boards of canada, jinnan, may, shibuya, shibuya-ku, tokyo, tomorrow's harvest

Kraftwerk 3D: Man Machine in Tokyo

May 21, 2013 by joostay

4 men. 1 album. 3 dimensions. After a sell-out (and computer crashing) run at the Tate Modern, Kraftwerk brings its catalogue retrospective to Tokyo: 8 consecutive gigs at the intimate Akasaka Blitz. It’s raining heavily in Tokyo. Outside a venue in one of the city’s central business districts, lines of people are waiting patiently, colourful umbrellas hoisted in the air. An almost fittingly minimalistic hand-drawn sign is taped to the door: KRAFTWERK. STARTS 5PM. Inside, you are immediately struck by the intimacy of […]

Categories: Art, Music & Culture • Tags: art, asia, bass, berlin, bizarre, clubbing, culture, electronica, germany, japan, kraftwerk, moog, music, ralf, south east asia, synths, tokyo, travel, urban

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The Missing Wallet

May 19, 2013 by joostay

Be a nice guy and you’ll be rewarded with cash and ice cream… So the other day I found a wallet on the train with ¥50,000 in it. That’s £320 or $500. Along with the cash, there were about ten different bank cards, a million loyalty cards and the guy’s full medical history. There was also one of his own business cards – so being the nice guy that I am, I called him up to arrange to give the […]

Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo • Tags: asia, chiyoda, gaijin, japan, nice guy, reward, sun, tokyo, urban

My first Kanda Matsuri

May 12, 2013 by joostay

Dogs wearing clothes & revellers carrying portable shrines… One of the three great Shinto festivals of Tokyo returns after a four-year absence. Traditionally held on odd-numbered years, the 2011 Kanda Matsuri was cancelled due to the Tohoku quake and tsunami – meaning this year’s event was the first since 2009. Quintessentially Japanese, Matsuris like this are what makes living in this country so special.

Categories: Traditional Festivals • Tags: asia, beer, culture, festival, guidebook, japan, kanda, matsuri, mikoshi, shrines, south east asia, street, sun, takoyaki, tokyo, travel

FRANCIS BACON / Tokyo Exhibition

May 10, 2013 by joostay

“You can’t be more horrific than life itself.” Your last chance to catch the master of the macabre in Tokyo. Described by Margaret Thatcher as “that man who paints those dreadful pictures,” Francis Bacon was one of the most exalted, most disliked artists of the postwar era. His abstract images of psychological and physical brutality still have the power to unsettle today – achieving on canvass what David Lynch achieves on film or what Beckett did on paper. The Tate gave […]

Categories: Art, Music & Culture • Tags: art, asia, bizarre, culture, drawing, francis bacon, japan, modern, popes, retrospective, south east asia, surreal, tokyo, weird

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Peace & solitude at Mt Oyama

May 5, 2013 by joostay

Why Mt Oyama earns its place on the list of ‘Kanagawa’s 50 Most Scenic Sites’ One of the best things about living in Tokyo is the ease of which you can escape it. Travel an hour in any direction and you’ll either end up on the beach or on top of a mountain. Izu and Hakone are both great day escapes – as is Takao, just an hour away from central Tokyo on the Keio line. The problem with Takao, however, is its popularity. 3 […]

Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo, Travel: Inside Japan • Tags: asia, cable car, food, hiking, isehara, japan, nature, odakyu, oyama, south east asia, train, travel, udon, walking

CAMBODIA

April 5, 2013 by joostay

Some photos from my time in Cambodia, including a short article on Happy Pizzas for Lonely Planet magazine. The happier side of Phnom Penh In the 1990s, Cambodia was a bad boy’s playground. Cheap drugs and even cheaper sex meant that the whole country was an ideal place for deviants to escape the humdrumness of the West; you could even blow up a cow with a grenade launcher if you were that way inclined… Nowadays, the deviant element is in decline – you’re more […]

Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: angkor wat, asia, backpacking, cambodia, culture, food, guidebook, phnom penh, siem reap, south east asia, travel

VIETNAM

April 3, 2013 by joostay

Over the last ten years I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited a good few countries around the world. As such, I thought it’d maybe be nice to collect together a few of the shots I have taken along the way. I’m not going to provide any narrative on these posts. These photos hold memories for me. But I hope they give a flavour of some of the places I’ve visited. First up: Vietnam.

Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: asia, backpacking, food, hanoi, ho chi minh city, pho, south east asia, travel, vietnam

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Shimokitazawa: End of the Line

March 25, 2013 by joostay

On 23 March 2013, the level crossings at Shimokitazawa in Tokyo lifted for the very last time. It was a sad day for anyone who has ever lived in the area. The Odakyu train line has now gone deep underground, and with it has brought a huge, brand new station that is both sterile and soulless in equal measures. It is not what Shimokitazawa is about, but I guess this is what you call ‘progress’ in the modern age. I […]

Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo • Tags: alleyways, art, culture, graffiti, japan, keio, odakyu, otaku, shimokitazawa, street, tokyo, train, urban

Yoshino Baigo: Plum Village

March 14, 2013 by joostay

Takoyaki, trees and silence: a plum pilgrimage to the hills of western Tokyo. Nobuo Umeatsu is a genius. Composer of the Final Fantasy soundtracks, he somehow manages to create atmospheric pieces of music that lie dormant in your brain only to burst to life once again at the most random moments. The reason I mention him is because the other day I visited a place called Plum Village. Nestled somewhere between the Tama River and the Yoshino mountains in the […]

Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo, Travel: Inside Japan • Tags: culture, guidebook, hinatawada, inaka, japan, mountains, ome, plum, tokyo, ume, yoshino baigo

Setusbun: my bean-throwing pilgrimage to Sensoji

February 9, 2013 by joostay

Evil spirits, a man with a cat on his shoulder and people throwing beans at each other. It can only be Setsubun ??? Japan’s own unique way of saying hello to spring. When I was nine years old I threw a plate of baked beans over some kid in my class …

Categories: Daily Life in Tokyo • Tags: asakusa, culture, festival, japan, matsuri, setsubun, tokyo

Bangkok from the inside

January 16, 2013 by joostay

Travelling in a city you’ve been to a few times before is always a bit difficult. You know what to expect culturally, financially and logistically ??? but because you’ve already hit the main sights on your first few visits you don’t quite know wha…

Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: asia, bangkok, food, japan, myanmar, nomad, nomadic, se asia, thailand, tokyo, travel

Visiting Mount Takao in Autumn/Fall

November 28, 2012 by joostay

Takao-san is the world’s busiest mountain. 2.6 million people climbed its slopes in 2011 alone, and last weekend it felt like every single one of them was there – shuffling along, taking pictures and eating carefully prepared bentos under the fall…

Categories: Travel: Inside Japan

TOKYO STICKER BOMBING v2.0

September 16, 2012 by joostay

Check out the original TOKYO STICKER BOMBING post here

Categories: Art, Music & Culture • Tags: alleyways, art, bombing, graffiti, harajuku, japan, punk, sticker, street, tattoo, tokyo, urban

David Lynch: Hand of Dreams

July 3, 2012 by joostay

“Hello to the people of Japan…” The 8th floor of an upmarket shopping mall in Shibuya is not exactly the first place you’d expect to hear David Lynch’s voice, but there it is, quietly looping on a wall-mounted TV in the corner of the room. Errat…

Categories: Art, Music & Culture

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