Welcome

Sometimes I’m on a highway bus scribbling notes about a giant lizard sculpture in Nago. Other times I’m standing under a seven hundred year-old tree, waiting for the rain clouds to shift over an ancient temple in the mountains of Chichibu. I might be sitting in a Doutor Coffee near Tokyo Station, surrounded by exhausted salarymen on rugged Panasonic laptops, planning my next trip to a hidden bamboo forest east of Kyoto. These scenes, places, and moments that tourists rush past and locals take for granted are Postcards from Japan.

Japan stretches about 3,000 kilometers from north to south, and there is an incredible amount of variety packed into that diagonal line — from landscapes to local customs. You can travel from a snowy village in Hokkaido to a remote subtropical beach in Okinawa in a single day using just public transportation. That still amazes me after all these years here. I get around by train, bus, and plane, and sometimes by electric bike. This lets me find hidden corners of famous spots as well as completely unknown places that never make it onto Google Maps.

I started this site because Japan’s most interesting stories are rarely in the guidebooks. They reveal themselves when you slow down and pay attention. Here I share what I find: photos, stories, and the occasional detail that makes me stop and take notes. When a place needs more than words and still images, I post videos on my YouTube channel.