We eased away from Naoshima to cities in a gradation of ferry, train, and shinkansen. By midday we were back underground, Osaka’s subway taking us into the heart of the metropolis. At first glance, Japan’s second city looks a lot like Tokyo: the same tower clusters, narrow lanes, elevated highways, and fine-grain concrete urbanism filling… Read More A Fistful of Yen
After more than a week of Japanese cities, we allowed ourselves a change of pace. From Kyoto, a few trains, a dockside lunch, and a brief rush through the heat found us on a small ferry bound for Naoshima. The small island loomed up ahead, bare brown rock rising from the inland sea, the distance… Read More Floating Worlds
Kyoto wasn’t on my list while trip planning. Everything I’d heard was of a nice but overtouristed city, camera-toting visitors trawling the streets, trailing behind women in kimonos, snapping mindlessly, or shuffling in long, winding queues on pathways between shrines. This didn’t appeal to me and I pushed back until, in the end, the inexorable… Read More Old Enough
We broke away from Tokyo for a daytrip into the western suburbs, a morning express train taking us to Kawagoe before a bus transfer to another smaller town. Our destination: the Kinbue Soy Sauce factory. Hannah had reached out over email weeks before, and we stood under a mister in the shade, dodging the heat,… Read More Day Trippers
Tokyo spread out 800 feet below us, an indistinguishable sea of buildings, shoulder to shoulder, stretched out across the Kanto Plain and broken only by the hard edges of the sea. Periodic clusters of skyscrapers showed where the rails and elevated highways, steel and concrete ribbons, come together. Somewhere to the west, Mount Fuji hid… Read More Back to the Future
The clouds were heavy and low, a looming threat as I climbed off at the Zagreb bus station. The loitering crowds paid no attention to any new arrivals, faces disappearing into the taxis or threading out on the sidewalks. Bag over shoulder, I opted to chance the coming rain and walk the half hour to… Read More Reconstruction Site
Tito stood derelict, the statue at an angle and nestled into a corner by the stairwell. The courtyard looked like a neglected backyard, patches of grass between bare dirt and tools left to rust. In spite of the surroundings, Tito’s eyes remained fixed firmly on a future that never was. The interior of the History… Read More Looking for Vučko
“Crazy driver” she said, her cab deftly swinging out to the right lane and surging ahead. My cabbie, a middle-aged bottle-blonde with lip fillers, had no need for a turn signal. She repeated this a dozen or so times on the way from the airport to my apartment in Bascarsija while we crossed the length… Read More Sarajevo My Love
Wallonia is essentially the French-speaking bottom half of Belgium, contrasted with Flanders, the Dutch-speaking north. In contrast to the Flemish, Walloons earn less on average and it shows in the towns that our Skoda wound through in the shallow valleys between rolling hills and forests. We were headed for Dinant, a small town nestled in… Read More At the Next Roundabout, Take the Second Exit
We spent the better part of a day carving a long arc over northern France, retracing our steps to Le Havre before turning east to Reims. The day’s drive ended in this mid-sized city of the Grand-Est region, which was chosen mostly for being in the right general location for our onward travels. I didn’t know what, if anything, to expect of Reims, but the first impressions were positive. … Read More Incertita Hora
Zak Abroad 