Places I'm Visiting: Japan – September–October 2025

Back home again after a month in Japan, I'm still working through the jet lag, but a busy schedule upon my return has helped to get me back in synch with the sun. As my visit this time was mostly to see my father-in-law before his passing, I haven't posted the extended notes I usually do as a way of remembering places visited and details noted. Most of the trip was spent on the island of Oshima, with family, but, after the funeral, we took a little time for a short trip. Just wanting to get away, we made no real plans before heading out, but I had wanted to to see Izumo Taisha, one of Japan's most important Shinto Shrines, so we headed off to Shimane Prefecture, on the Sea of Japan side of Japan's main island of Honshu. 

Along the way, we stopped at the Adachi Museum of Art. Although the main collection was not of much interest, a recently added wing devoted to the ceramic work of Kitaōji Rosanjin was worth the time, and the gardens around the museum are famous. Some consider them to be Japan's most beautiful. I'm not sure I agree. While they are very pretty, I thought them a little too tidy, a little too perfectly manicured. Still, I enjoyed the view. 

We visited Shimane Winery, which turned out to be mostly a tourist destination. I noticed a lot of vineyards in the area. Because of the frequent rains in Japan, grapes here are almost entirely grown in greenhouses rather than outdoors. 

We took a quick look at Matsue Castle, which is noteworthy because it is one of the few medieval castles in Japan that retains its original keep. Most castles in the country have been extensively restored, although some more than others. Quite a number have been completely rebuilt in modern times on the site of their ruins. 

We found a Lafcadio Hearn Museum in Matsue and, next door, a house that Hearn once lived in. I knew of Hearn, having often heard the name, and long ago I read his best-known book, Kwaidan, a collection of retold Japanese ghost stories, but I knew little about the man. The museum was surprisingly informative and the English labels on the exhibits were complete and written in good English, which is unusual. Often English labeling in Japanese museums is abbreviated and just as often it suffers from poor, sometimes incomprehensible, translation. 

I hadn't known that Hearn had worked as a journalist in Cincinnati or that he had lived in Greece, Ireland, and England and worked briefly in Tahiti, apparently getting to know Gauguin there. I hadn't known that Hearn had lived in New Orleans and that he even wrote a creole cookbook. He lived in various places in Japan besides Matsue, but it was there that raised his family with his Japanese wife, Settsu, who is currently the subject of an NHK serial drama. If you happen to find yourself in Shimane and have any interest in literature, the Hearn Museum is well worth the price of admission. 

Other things I learned included the fact that the area around Matsue was once an important cotton producing area and that the manga creator Mizuki Shigeru was from Sakaiminato, a nearby town just over the border into Tottori Prefecture. Cotton  production in the area began in the early 1700s, although later there appears to have been a shift toward silk production. There is a small section of the town of Hirata, between Matsue and Izumo Tashia, with buildings that date back to the cotton days, some of them restored and repurposed. On a stroll through the area, I noticed many shops with potted cotton plants out front, a nod to the local history. In Sakaiminato there is a street several blocks long dedicated to Mizuki lined with bronze sculptures of his yokai creations and some of the streetlights there project images of the monsters on the street. 

I spent my last three days in Japan in Tokyo, which afforded the opportunity to catch up with some old friends and colleagues and to enjoy a couple of good meals. On the plane home, I had the good fortune of being seated beside a young couple with interests that aligned with my own, which led to an extended conversation – always a welcome distraction on a long flight.

Shigematsu Yoshiteru (1930-2025)

Last week we said goodbye to my wife's father. It was a simple ceremony. Along with the usual rites, my wife spoke briefly about his very active life in the community in which he lived for nearly all of his 94+ years. The flowers were beautiful. 

Among the relatives who attended the funeral, was a woman who brought along an old photograph of him at about the age of 15, just after the end of the Pacific War. The little girl he is carrying in the photo (above) is the woman who brought the photo. Despite my being a foreigner and marrying his oldest daughter, he was always good to me and, on visits to the US, he helped us landscape our garden. His specialty was building traditional stone walls. RIP.

Places I'm visiting: Japan September 2025 – Life birds

Back in Tokyo now, and heading home tomorrow. On the way to the airport for my flight from Matsuyama to Tokyo on September 30,  I made a brief stop along the Tateiwa River in the town of Hojo (now absorbed into Matsuyama but I still think of it as a separate town). I lived in Hojo for a year as a teenager. Along the river I spotted an unfamiliar sandpiper. Thanks to adjustments to my camera settings recommended by my new birding acquaintance from Oshima, I was able to get a nice shot of one of the birds in flight. This is a Terek Sandpiper (Xenus cinereus). It's fairly common throughout Asia, but a very rare accidental visitor in California. Another "lifer" for me.

In total, at the end of my trip to Japan this time (which was not a birdwatching trip) I managed to get a total of eight life birds:

*Asian Brown Flycatcher (Kosamebitaki)

*Grey-streaked Flycatcher (Ezobitaki)

*Dark-sided Flycatcher (Samebitaki)

*Red-rumped Swallow (Koshiaka tsubame)

*Japanese Kingfisher (Kawasemi)

*Black-tailed Gull (Umineko)

*Kamchatka Leaf Warbler (Ōmushikui)

*Terek Sandpiper (Sorihashi-shigi)

Places I'm Visiting: Japan again

For the second time this year, I find myself in Japan. I visited in April with recreation mostly in mind. Now, in the oppressive heat and humidity of September, I'm here because my father in law, now 94 years old, is ill and not expected to live much longer. I wanted to see him before he dies. It was a hastily arranged trip. I arrived the day before yesterday. Afflicted not only by the heat but also by jet lag, it still fees a bit surreal to be here. That said, the place is familiar. I always find it easy to adjust. It feels a bit like stepping on to one of those moving walkways at the airport – a pull at the moment of transition, a momentary loss of balance, but then solid strides at a new pace. 

Unexpectedly, on my second day here, I was invited to help harvest grapes in a small vineyard on the island of Omishima in Japan's Inland Sea. I spent the morning picking clusters of Chardonnay. Japan is not a friendly place for Vitis vinifera, the wine grape vine. It is too rainy and too humid. Making wine successfully here requires various interventions not required in the dry climate I grow grapes in in Northern California.

The vines are trained in the cordon style but high above the ground. My vines at home are trained with their lateral branches at about 36 inches. The lateral branches here were at my eye level, the grape clusters hanging just below. The high training keeps the developing fruit away from ground moisture after rain. The rows of grapes are covered with transparent plastic stretched over frames to keep rain off the leaves and grape clusters. In addition, frequent use of ant-fungal agents appears to be required. Despite these efforts, there was considerable rot in the clusters we picked. Much of the time it took to harvest about a ton of grapes was occupied in removing bad grapes from the clusters one by one before dropping the remaining clean grapes into the collection bins. The pickers used a handy tool that was a pair of shears on one end and a set of tweezers on the other, the latter for removing bad grapes from the clusters. Later in my trip, I saw grapes being grown in Shimane Prefecture, on the Japan Sea side of the main island of Honshu. All the grapes I noticed there were being grown in greenhouses. 

We tasted three wines that the proprietors brought along, a rosé of Merlot and Muscat Bailey A, an unoaked Chardonnay from last year's grapes, and an "orange wine" from Delaware grapes. Delaware is a table grape, but the Delaware was rather good. On the nose, it was extraordinarily fruity, smelling simply of fresh grapes (which usually isn't a good sign in wine), but it turned out to be quite dry, free of excessive grapiness, and nicely balanced.  Later I tasted another Muscat Bailey A wine from this winery that had been aged 18 months in French oak. While it was a bit acidic, it was reminiscent of a Pinot Noir. I think with a little bottle age, it might even pass for a Burgundy. Most Muscat Bailey A wines I've tasted in Japan in the past have been modeled on Bordeaux wines, so this was refreshingly different. In any case, It was fun to spend a morning with people dedicating themselves to trying to make good wine in difficult conditions.

We were among about eight volunteers helping out. Omishima is about an hour away from the town of Hojo (now part of the city of Matsuyama) where I was a high school exchange student in 1977, now 48 years ago. A couple of the people helping out turned out to be from Hojo and, in the course of chatting while we worked, it became clear that I had met one of the volunteer grape pickers those 48 years ago, when I was 17 and he was about 13. Wandering around Hojo in October of 1977, a few days before the annual autumn festival in the town, I had come across a group of boys polishing the hardware on a danjiri (a wheeled, portable shrine used in the festival) and practicing their drumming. One of the boys had called me over and let me bang on the drum a bit. The man I was chatting with, harvesting grapes beside me, told me that he was that boy. I don't remember the encounter as well as he does (having been the only caucasian in a town of 30,000 people, I stood out. I didn't always know people who knew me, or at least knew of me). I don't recall drumming, but I do remember the boys polishing the hardware. Small world. 

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Little cars

Not too long ago, Mr. Trump, in one of his rants, brought up the issue of the car market in Japan. He complained, as past presidents have done, that Japanese consumers don't buy US-made cars. The reason is simple. American cars, generally speaking, are too big for Japanese roads. 

US automakers make no attempt to design cars that will sell in Japan. Japanese consumers mostly want small, relatively inexpensive, right-hand drive cars. Kei cars (typically under 11 feet in length and 4 feet in width, engine displacement 660cc or less, power output capped at 63 horsepower) account for around 40% of new cars sold in Japan. In rural areas, the percentage is surely higher. I'd say easily 60%–70% of the cars on the road in the rural areas I visited in April and May (in Shikoku and Kyushu) were kei cars. 

Until US automakers are willing to address the needs of local consumers, they will never sell cars in Japan in appreciable numbers. Here are a few photos of small, right-hand drive cars seen in Japan. Notice that they have yellow and black license plates, indicating  the vehicle is a kei car. I could have taken hundreds more photos like these. Tiny cars are everywhere in Japan – which is appropriate given the narrow roads.

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Birds

Back home after five weeks in Japan, it's taking some time to adjust. On my mind in particular is editing photos from the last two weeks of my trip, which were spent mainly on the small island of Iyo-Oshima, where my wife grew up. One easy bit of organization was finishing a list of the birds I saw on my trip. I ended up with  44 species observed, of which 14 were what we birders refer to as "life birds" – a species observed for the first time in a lifetime. In the list below, those marked with an asterisk were life birds for me. I regret not having been able to get a good shot of the beautiful Narcissus Flycatcher – maybe next time....

Eurasian Tree Sparrow

Oriental Turtle Dove

*White-cheeked Starling

*Azure-winged Magpie

Brown-cheeked Bulbul

Carrion Crow

Large-billed Crow

Meadow Bunting

Coal Tit

*Willow Tit

Long-tailed Tit

*Grey Wagtail

Winter Wren

Eastern Spot-billed Duck

Mallard

Rock Dove

Grey Heron

*Japanese Green Pheasant

White Wagtail

Oriental Greenfinch

*Japanese Wagtail

Varied Tit

Pale Thrush

* Dusky Thrush

Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker

Great Coromorant

* Brown Dipper

Eurasian Teal

Black-eared Kite

Grey Heron

Great White Egret

* Little Grebe

* Japanese Grosbeak

* Ryukyu Minivet

* Japanese Bush Warbler

Blue Rock Thrush

• Masked Bunting

Eurasian Coot

Comon Moorhen

Common Pochard

Tufted Duck

Osprey

* Narcissus Flycatcher

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Kurashiki

A short trip to Kurashiki. Kurashiki is a modern Japanese city. In many parts of it, you'd see few signs of its history as an important hub of commerce, but step into its well-preserved old town and it's like you're in another time. 

The area now the old part of the city was once a shallow inland sea. It was drained in the 17th century and became a center of salt production and then a center of cotton production, in part because cotton is unusually tolerant of salty soil. Production of cotton led to cotton spinning and Kurashiki became famed for its denim (Kurashiki is the still the home of Kurabo Industries, originally Kurashiki Boseki [Kurashiki Spinning], a major producer of textiles and other products; its first factory complex, built in the 1880s, has been converted into a hotel and retail shops). 

Many of the city's cotton and textile warehouses, retail stores, and residences dating from as far back as the late 1600s have been preserved or restored. There is an entire district of white stucco and tile architecture, buildings that today house shops and restaurants but also businesses, some of which have been in continuous operation for 100 years or more. 

The town has dozens of museums, the most famous of which is the Ohara Museum of Art. In addition to the Ohara Museum, there is a toy museum, there are other art museums, a history museum, a museum of natural history, a museum of folk arts, and others. 

I mainly wanted to see the Ohara Museum on this visit – another place I last saw more than four decades ago. Opened in 1930, it was the first permanent collection of Western art in Japan. It originally showed mostly French paintings and sculpture of the 19th and 20th centuries but later expanded to include paintings from other European countries and other periods. Today the collection also includes work by some well-known 20th century American artists.

The collection was originally established through the patronage of Ōhara Magosaburō, whose wealth stemmed from the Kurashiki textile industry and on the advice of the  painter Kojima Torajirō (1881–1929). In 1961 a wing was added for Japanese paintings of the early 20th century (including work by Fujishima Takeji, Aoki Shigeru, Kishida Ryūsei, Koide Tarushige and others) and a wing was added for ceramic work by Kawai Kanjirō, Bernard Leach, Hamada Shōji, Tomimoto Kenkichi and others in the same year. A wing was later added to show woodcuts by Munakata Shikō and dyed textiles by Serisawa Keisuke. These last two sections are now together known as the Crafts Wing (Kōgei-kan). A memorial hall dedicated to the work of painter Kojima Torajirō is nearby. 

While the Ohara collection has a few gems (an excellent Gauguin, an oil sketch by Cezanne, and several excellent pieces by Japanese artists), on the whole I think the ceramics in the Crafts Wing are of a higher caliber. The work of Hamada Shōji is consistently of the highest quality but I was also impressed by the work of Kawai Kenjiro, a potter I had not previously been aware of. 

There is an El Greco Annunciation in the collection that gets a lot of attention, but I've never been able to stomach El Greco. I think he's the man who invented painting on velvet. So, if you visit the museum, don't miss the Crafts Wing. Unfortunately, photography is banned throughout the museum (except in a small section of antiquities), so I can't show you any highlights. 

Kurashiki is in Okayama Prefecture, once known as Bizen, and the famous Bizen Ware pottery is very much in evidence with many specialty stores selling handmade Bizen pots. With all the museums and the dozens of shops and boutiques, you could easily spend a couple of days wandering through the old town. The old town manages to remain an historical district while at the same time carrying on as a vibrant modern shopping and business area. Well worth a visit.

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Mt. Aso

Our tour of Kyushu ended with a visit to Mt. Aso after a stop at Takachiho Shrine. We went to see the shrine but also to complete a mission. We were asked by the proprieties of the inn we had stayed in the night before to deliver a package – some of her home-baked bread. On hearing that we were heading for the shrine, she asked us to take the bread to the Guji there (the head priest at the shrine), a friend of hers. Mission accomplished. The area around the shrine is said to be the location of several key events in the creation myths recorded in Japan's earliest written documents, but, as a guide I overheard said, no place names are mentioned, so other places have made the same claims. Regardless, the area is pretty. It’s known for its serried cedar forests (logging operations were evident everywhere – old stands of trees alongside clear-cut areas and areas newly replanted), for  its terraced rice fields, and for its volcanic rock formations. 

On my trip to Kyushu 48 years ago, we made a stop at Mt. Aso, but it was completely shrouded in dense fog. There was simply nothing to see. This time, the weather was more favorable. Aso is one of Japan's most active volcanos. In the main crater there is at present a blue-green lake of sulfuric acid that has been relatively stable, but occasionally there are small eruptions and even in a stable state the crater constantly spews steam. The area around the crater is strewn with rocks expelled in previous eruptions, mostly pumice and scoria. It all looks peaceful, but a row of colored warning lights at the entrance to the main crater area that reflect the level of sulfur dioxide in the air and concrete shelters that look like they belong on the WWII Normandy Coast are proof that anything could happen at any time. Most visitors appeared unconcerned.

Along the way, we stumbled upon the Sakamoto Zenzo Museum, a small museum dedicated to the work of – you guessed it – Sakamoto Zenzo, an abstract artist that was active mostly in the 1960s and 1970s and into the 1980s. The work was housed in an attractive building that looked fairly Western from the outside, but was very traditional inside. The place claims to be Japan’s only art museum with floors entirely of tatami mats.

One inn we stayed at, the Luna Observatory Auberge Mori No Atelier, has the second-largest privately owned telescope in Japan (82cm, or 32.3 inches – second-largest by one centimeter), a planetarium, and it offers stargazing sessions in the fields behind the inn. Telescopes of this size are generally owned by governments or institutes of education. 

The view through the telescope, to be honest, was a bit disappointing as the weather was not very good, but the instrument itself was impressive. It dwarfs a figure standing beside it. At the touch of a button, it will find any celestial object in its database. The man who demonstrated the telescope works in the restaurant as a waiter. The man who did the planetarium demonstration also works as a waiter. It was amusing to watch them change hats. As waiters they were awkward. When talking about the stars, they were in their element.

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Takachiho Gorge

After seeing the Buddhist statues at Usuki, we visited Takachiho Gorge, which is a popular tourist stop. You can rent a row boat to see the gorge from water level. I've photographed it artfully, making the place look quite deserted, but, in reality, it's full of unpracticed boaters bumping into the walls of the gorge and into each other. 

I found it difficult to row with my back to the direction of travel (which is the correct way to propel a rowboat) and ended up doing it backwards, which worked but probably looked strange. 

The gorge is pretty even though only a small portion is accessible. Worth a visit, but make a reservation online ahead of time – the wait for a boat otherwise can be as long as five hours.

One highlight was seeing a small dark bird zoom past, flying just over the surface of the water and straight down the gorge – behavior that immediately identified the bird as a Dipper of some sort. I later looked it up and found that the Brown Dipper (Cinclus pallasii) is the local Dipper – a new life bird for me.