
Titanic Belfast: Northern Ireland
by joostay
From Belfast to the world: Visiting Europe’s leading tourist attraction
Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: belfast, design, northern ireland, photography, Titanic, travel writing
by joostay
From Belfast to the world: Visiting Europe’s leading tourist attraction
Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: belfast, design, northern ireland, photography, Titanic, travel writing
by joostay
I’m back in Northern Ireland for a few weeks for the holidays. Today some of my old bandmates and I climbed up Cave Hill, overlooking Belfast. Cave Hill is thought to be the inspiration for Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with Swift imagining that the Hill resembled the shape of a sleeping giant safeguarding the city.
Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: belfast, blog, cave hill, green, ireland, japan, nature, northern ireland, outdoors, photography, travel
by joostay
Back to Bali – and escaping the End of Days. I’ve written a bit before about Hellrides – those horribly twisted and depraved long-distance drives my old band used to do every night in order to play a farcical gig in front of no one. My touring days may be behind me, but travelling in Asia often means cramped conditions, squalid surroundings and not quite knowing if you’ll end up at your intended final destination. Not much change from playing on the DIY punk circuit then, […]
Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: airplane, bali, belfast, boat, CREATIVE, dangerfields, hellride, indonesia, ireland, journey, northern ireland, photography, punk, punk rock, story, train, travel
by joostay
How my small home town was once regarded as one of the most important places in the world. Having an interest in travel means I also have an interest in maps: the ongoing progression and evolution of how our planet is perceived. It’s amazing to think that at one time people’s knowledge of the earth was not so different than our own perception of space today: not exactly knowing what was out there. This curiosity drove explorers to go beyond […]
Categories: Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: bangor, belfast, blog, church, county down, hereford, history, ikimasho, japan, map, mappa mundi, medieval, normans, northern ireland, tokyo, travel, uk, united kingdom
by joostay
Categories: Art, Music & Culture, Travel: Outside Japan • Tags: art, belfast, creartivity, CREATIVE, design, grafitti, ikimasho, northern ireland, photography, STREET ART, travel, uk
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