Tag Archives: japan

After surviving the Fugu, it was time for a stroll. And since the Tokyo Imperial Palace wasn’t far from our hotel, we figured that’s where we should be heading…

Coming up – lots of photos, few words. Who needs words when you’ve got scenes like these? ->

Read on…

My recent trip to Japan wasn’t a very long one, but you’ve already had five posts about it (on transportation, a safari park, Disneyland, TeamLab and work)! And guess what? There are quite a few more still to come! But of course there are. For this is Japan – always different, always curiously fascinating!

Coming up – the following themes: food, city, and… hotel-room views. So where shall I begin? Always begin with a full belly – so here we go with Japanese dining!…

Japanese cuisine is fantastically beautiful – besides being fantastically delicious. Oiy-shee means “tasty” in Japanese, and I found myself repeating the word every single day while in the country…

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After all the good fun with the kids at Japan’s Disneyland and TeamLab, it was time to turn my attention to work. And that meant the Interop 24 IT exhibition, meetings with business partners, plus several interviews with the press…

I also needed to drop by our Tokyo office to lift the spirits of the team there given the ongoing geopolitical turbulence ->

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My next tale from the Japanese side is one of astonishment.

It’s not too often you see me astonished. But it does happen occasionally. It happened on the Kolyma Highway in Siberia – and not due to the extreme cold itself but its extraordinary bleaching effect on the surrounding landscapes. There was astonishment at the beauty to behold on the roads of Namibia. There was the way the company pulled through the covid pandemic. There was our vacation to the Galapagos Islands (pdf – 25MB). All these and more…

My latest astonishment came while visiting Tokyo’s TeamLab art-collective’s light-and-sound installations, which this post is all about.

Basically, it’s unbelievably cool. It all lasts just an hour-and-a-half, but the journey you take there through different halls digitally painted in the most insanely grandiose way – it’s, well… astonishing…

There are hanging strings of light that change color constantly ->

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My recent business trip to Japan came with plenty of tourism that took place before I got down to work. But of course it did, for I was showing the country to the younger generation for the first time. Now, the best kind of tourism for me personally is the high-octane adventurous kind (like in Kamchatka, Altai, or even more extreme places) and mostly involving lots of trekking – sometimes up volcanoes. But that’s hardly suitable for kids now is it? So what was I going to do with them in Japan (after our warm-up at Fuji Safari Park)? So I turned to the internet for advice, and a quick search gave me the answer quicker than you could say Mickey Mouse: take them to Tokyo Disneyland!…

It sure isn’t the biggest, most attraction-packed of the six Disney theme parks in the world, but for a one-day visit – there’s more than enough fun to be had…

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It’s already the school holidays in Russia, which means my kids were kicking about the apartment and starting to get a little bored already. So when I saw that Japan was on my business-trip schedule for June, I figured I could take them with me for some pre-business tourism – taking in both Tokyo and Mount Fuji. When I suggested this they jumped at the chance; but of course they did, for look what awaited them:

However, when planning the trip, I forgot to consider the seasonal climatic conditions for June in Japan. And it wasn’t as if it was the first time I was heading to the land of the rising sun in June either – and those times were always murky and damp. Btw – the first pic above was taken in November (of 2013) – one of the best times of the year to see Mount Fuji; unlike June, grrr ->

Still, the kids didn’t seem to mind; and I’d seen Fuji quite a few times already – including from up above it ->

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Hi everyone, from… ->

Having delved into my archives, I discovered that this trip to Japan is my 31^st! Yes, I love Japan – with all its… uniqueness, about which I’ve written plenty. But it was only on this visit that I realized I haven’t touched upon Tokyo’s road transportation system – particularly its special highway network. And it really does deserve touching upon since it’s one of the most striking features of the Japanese capital…

Read on…

It was farewell to the quiet backwater of Hokkaido, and hello to the world’s largest city (by population) – Tokyo! Time to get some work done!…

Alas, we were so busy we had zero time for tourisms. It was literally all work, work, work – strictly formal too: I wore a suit! Meetings, handshakes, discussions, and the inevitable low bows. Doing business in Japan these days for us is really tricky – but we don’t never give up! Despite the geopoliticalisms that we’ve zero control over, there’s still plenty of demand here for the world’s supreme quality cybersecurity.

Back at the hotel after sundown – I managed a few photos out the window but, like I say, 0 tourism (…

…And the next morning – what a beautiful day! ->

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Hokkaido – the northernmost of Japan’s main islands – had always been a curious mystery to me. I’d been so close yet so far a few times before on my trips to and around the Kuril Islands next-door – but never had I set foot there. Until the other week…

Hokkaido – meaning ~Northern Sea Circuit, is unsurprisingly just as volcanistic as the Kurils, as you can see in the above pic. It also features nice little houses, like these ->

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Today, aviation theme…

Window-seat air travel can be strange. There you are, ensconced, with plenty of thoughts whirling around in your head, but your brain doesn’t pay any attention to them – it just keeps looking out the window. Then, something aerial-awesome comes into view. Thoughts? What thoughts?! And then the hands reach for the camera almost automatically, and it’s “here we go again!” At least, that’s how things played out recently when flying on the short flight from Tokyo to Singapore, in this here mid-size airliner:

Right from the get-go after take-off the views out the window were fantastic. First up – the Japanese strong work-ethic, preciseness, and space-economy were in full view as far as the eye could see ->

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