Who's Behind Autumn in Japan?

Thanks for visiting this blog.  The islands of Japan have inspired me since I was in high school.  In the autumn of 2008 I finally took my first trip to Japan and created this blog to document my travels.

While you are here, check out my book, Avoiding the Blues. It was published during the summer of 2010.  It recounts my personal path through the corporate world and the lessons I learnt along the way.  Lessons regarding running an IT services business and, more importantly, how to succeed in the corporate world, and life, without losing sense of who you are.

I have one other blog, Ideeahs, which I use to express my thoughts on everyday life and world events.

My personal website is olivierdesousa.com.

Contact me via e-mail at olivier@olivierdesousa.com

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Temples, Forests and Streams - Nikko

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I spent a day and a half in Nikko October 28 and 29th.  It is a village of 95,000 people north of Tokyo.  To get here I took the bullet train from Ueon Station in Tokyo to Utsunomiya Station.  There I switched to a local train line called the Nikko Line.  In all it took about an hour and forty minutes of travel time. Nikko is situated in a valley with a river called the Daiya-gawa running through it.  It really is a rushing stream.  In fact, every where in Nikko you here rushing water.  Whether it is the Daiya itself or the numerous other streams that are all rushing rapidly down to meet the Daiya.  Most streets have narrow stone culverts on either side and you can see the rushing water (or hear it when they are covered).  It is a nice sound that drowns out other man-made ones. Forests.  The valley that Nikko is built in has some fantastic forests.  The trees are immense.  They look like cedars to me based on the stringy bark.  One thing for sure is that they are in fact big.  Many of
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The Ueno Area - History in Art and Those Passed Away

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I spent the afternoon of my second day, the 24th of October in the Ueno area...about 1.5 to 2 km to the west of Asakusa and my ryokan - a nice walk.   I had lunch at an Udon place just south of the Ueno Station, under the tracks.  To order my meal I had to go to a vending machine that had the pictures of meals and their respective prices.  I inserted my 390 yen, pushed the button, brought my ticket to the kitchen and about five minutes later I was slurping (noisily as one is supposed to do) my noodles. I then headed through Ueno Park to Tokyo National Museum.  It was just pouring rain...in fact it poured all day.  Torrential rain...all day.  I had never experienced that before, not for that length of time.  I got soaked and parts of the park were saturated.  The museum would be a good place to spend a few hours.   I did three of the multiple buildings of the museum.  The one that impressed me most was the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, mostly because I really liked the modern architectu
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Tsukiji Is Moving!

I read in the news this morning that the Tsukiji market will be moving in November of this year.  I took this in reading the Economist Espresso this morning.  It surprised my how sad I felt as I read the news.  I also immediately thought that I was happy I had returned to Japan last summer with my wife and children.  They will have seen that iconic market at least once before it moves to the Toyosu area and gets renamed the Toyosu Shin Shijo. For the next ten months Tsukiji becomes, more than ever, one of the must see places in Tokyo.  For so many reasons. It gets you out of bed early! It is an incredibly exciting and busy place where you need to watch your every step as wholesalers move the fish around in their gas-powered trolleys It smells like the sea and you'll never see so much of the amazing fruits of the ocean in one place (sadly, yes, we are overfishing) You can have the freshest sushi in the morning for breakfast and walk some cool narrow alleys serving all kinds o
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