January 2020 (3 min read)

“Guess how many people in Japan are a hundred years old or more?”, asks Andy Kenji Marsden, the founder of Osaka Backstreet Tours. Banjo, who is nine, thinks there could be 20 million, I guess a 1,000, Nick says 10,000 and Iris, our teenager, is the closest at 100,000. There are in fact almost 70,000 centenarians in Japan and the number is rising each year.

January 2020 (3 min read)

Money, money, money. At the Ebisu festival in Osaka, Japan’s city of merchants and its third largest, you got to spend money to make it. Ebisu is the rotund, smiley-faced God of fishermen, commerce and luck, and during the Festival the Japanese buy offerings that will help guarantee a prosperous year ahead.

January 2020 (3 min read)

The cavernous lobby of the Marriott Miyako Hotel in Osaka is exhilarating. Something wild about the soaring view and lobby makes your heart race. The rooms occupy floors 38 to 57 of Abeno Harukas, the tallest complex in the whole of Japan. We could have stayed in ours all day, sipping coffee, and taking photographs of the changing light on the city.