With a bit of a misleading title, I challenge the notion that the best winters are, indeed, in Canada. The longest, the darkest, the coldest, the snowiest… list goes on, but maybe “best” isn’t one of them. Lest the respectable reader should think that I only write long rambling articles about annoyingly sunny, pleasant, hard to reach places, I will happily prove that wrong by writing a long, rambling article about being effectively buried in the snow for a week. Soldier on!!
The Japanese automotive industry is obviously known as one of the powerhouses of the global car supply (and considering Toyota is #1 carmaker in the world, they have reason to be somewhat confident of their status). Part of the problem, though, is that most Japanese cars that are seen around the world are boring beige boxes that would put to sleep a starving cheetah propped up on crystal meth, and although they’re making very feeble attempts at rectifying that, the road is long and fraught with peril – because convincing, for instance, the American public that there’s something other than Honda Accord, Honda Civic, a Toyota Camry, a Prius and maybe a Corolla would be a gargantuan feat.
A typical foreigner’s visit to Japan begins with the shrines in Kyoto, and possibly the megapolis of Tokyo. For many people, this is about the image of Japan that they have, and they walk away from it with an impression…
The following week after my mad blitz to Komatsu and Miyazaki, I continued my visits to places less travelled in Japan, and did a weekend run to Kumamoto. It helped that I had a friend there that I’ve not seen…
So after I finished my trip to Komatsu (well, “trip” is maybe a bit too big of a word given that it was a day trip), I still had the Sunday of that weekend remaining, not to mention the night.…
So since I have a decent amount of free time on weekends, and a huge stash of Avios points – and it costs only 4,500 points each way (and $3 of taxes), I decided to explore Japan. Today, I’m going to to Komatsu – the only thing the city is really known for is the eponymous construction company. In light whereof, there’s apparently the world’s largest dump truck parked near the main station, as well as a fairly impressive car museum. So here we go.
I should preface this post by saying that not all my trips necessarily make sense (some of my friends would probably argue that only some of my trips do make sense, but were they to do so, they would promptly cease to be part of that exclusive category, so they don’t). Sometimes I travel because of reasons that other people would think I should be locked up for; some people already think that, for what it’s worth.
It occurred to me that if I buffer my posts until I’m done posting the Burma stuff, I’ll be so swamped with subsequent travel that I’ll never get the posts done. So I’m going to intersperse the Burma trip with…
There is probably no more beautiful city than Kyoto. It’s a terribly cheesy statement. An intensely disputable one, as well, considering the multitude of other examples of cities which are serene and beautiful. But if you visit Kyoto, and especially if…
The next morning, we woke up and breakfast was pretty much ready. A note on Japanese ryokans: they typically have fairly late checkin times, and very early checkout times. Late checkout, as is common in North America (particularly with status), is…