Experience
I’m rarely spotted without at least one flower in my hair. I simply adore flowers. So, when Tokyo Challenge asked me to attempt ikebana — the Japanese art of flower arrangement — I can hardly say I was surprised. Their proposal, however, was a double-edged sword: it sounded both intensely fun and intensely frustrating.
Eating & Drinking
In the past year, Tokyo Survival Channel has assigned me some pretty wild tasks. I spent 24 long hours in an izakaya, tried urban camping on a Tokyo rooftop during peak summer, and did my best to learn 24 skills in 24 hours (no sleep allowed). So when they asked me to try this new…
Experience
Halloween is here! And with it a whole host of mainstream monsters descending upon us: vampires, werewolves, zombies… But did you know that Japan has its own bestiary of supernatural beings called yokai? These creatures range from cute to creepy, to downright terrifying. When Tokyo Survival Channel challenged me to make a yokai-themed haunted house this…
Traveling
The Challenge “Phoebe, do you remember when you mentioned that cool new campervan company? Well, how about a challenge…” A simple enquiry from a Tokyo Challenge editor sparked fervent brainstorming as the concept became clearer and shimmered into view. With many people working remotely more often and realising there is absolutely no reason to be…
Traveling
It’s been a year in which we have all seen changes in how we live our lives. Many of us have probably done quite a bit of reflecting on how we want to live going forward. Given that more and more people are working remotely — at least part of the time — there’s no…
Eating & Drinking
We might have found the first-ever influencer here in Japan, in records dating back 1200 years ago, and images from the late 19th century. This long-haired, bird-beaked, scale-covered, three-legged yokai monster sounds like something you wouldn’t ever want to lay your eyes upon – but you totally should. Legend has it that seeing a drawing…
Experience
The change in the season from spring to summer in Japan is a celebration when people come together, eat together, dance together on Japanese folk tunes, play funfair games, and watch firecrackers while spreading summer cheer. Summer festivals (natsu-matsuri) are an ingrained part of the Japanese tradition and culture eagerly awaited each year. Last year…
Experience
The episode where Zoria gets overzealous to be Zen, from zero to a zillion Try a meditation app, they said. It’Ll bE fUn, ThEy SaId… All those apps promising peace of mind, and the first one I download had the audacity to tell me to accept that all the great civilizations are dead and downfall…
Eating & Drinking
It was 7:30am and I was squinting under a neon light in a 24-hour store in one of the grottiest areas of Shinjuku, holding a giant bottle of peach liqueur. It was the morning of my 32nd birthday and I vaguely wondered whether to question my life choices. Even by the standard of my usual…
Experience
We’re now an unsaid and probably unforeseeable amount of months into COVID related restrictions, lockdown, travel bans, and general uncertainty. The novelty of zoom drinking parties has long been forgotten, in the memory bin along with dalgona coffee, DIY sourdough and the naive but admirable home-bound self-improvement projects. So what’s next? What can we do…
Shopping
When I landed in Tokyo with my husband six months ago, little did I know that Japan was just at the brink of a pandemic that would shut down all the borders, and being trapped indoors would be a new normal. While we were lucky enough to find a place within the first few weeks…
Experience
Broken things don’t have to stay broken. This is not a groundbreaking philosophy I’m just revealing to you, as we all own a stick of superglue, or a thread and a needle. Broken things can be mended. However, you don’t need to hide the evidence of the fractures. This is exactly where kintsugi stands out…
Eating & Drinking
L’Apéritif French cooking is notoriously difficult. Chefs train for years to perfect these complicated and delicate techniques to create some of the world’s most intricate, yet deceptively simple-looking dishes. So when I was challenged to recreate three dishes from a high end, fine-dining French restaurant in Ginza in my not so high end, little Japanese…