After our stay in Tokyo is was time to head out west to Yokohama to visit our good friend Yoshi. It turns out that Yokohama is the second biggest city in Japan which surprised me as I always thought that title belonged to Osaka but alas. Based on population size Yokohama is bigger but I…
Category: japan
Tokyo: Our Tourist Edition
During our time in Japan, we spent plenty of time visiting the tourist spots of Tokyo but but more as a tour guide to our friends and family rather than a tourist. We loved this because when life in Japan became more ‘normal’ seeing the magic of this crazy country through their eyes made it…
Makuhari Revisited
For those of you who have followed The Travelling Holts’ journey from the beginning, you will know that this blog started eight years ago when we decided to move to Japan. It has grown so much since then, currently leading us to Sweden. However, how we left Japan never sat well with us. We always…
8 Amazing Side Trips from Tokyo
When we lived in Japan, we used to get a lot of visitors. Some used to visit for long periods of time, around two or three weeks. This would give us time to see the more popular sites further a field like Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Himeji, etc… which are highly recommended if you have the…
10 Best Things About Living In Japan
You know the age old saying, “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone?” Well now that we have been in Sweden nearly a year living the Covid high life, I do find myself thinking about Japan a lot and the things we miss. Of course what we miss is what made living in…
Sayonara Japan
When I first started this blog, way back when in 2013, I had just handed my notice in at work and was preparing for the biggest move of our lives to Japan. I wanted a way to document our journey and there was born… The Travelling Holts. That was nearly 7 years ago and it…
Teaching in Japan- Everything you need to know.
So you’re thinking about accepting a teaching job in Japan but you’re not sure if it is for you? Well here are somethings I think you should be aware of after teaching in Japan for 6 years. So what do you need to know? At the end of the day, Japan is a very unique…
Rikugien Gardens
Japan is a country of four distinct seasons. Winter is all about skiing and hot pot (Shabu Shabu), Spring is all about the famous Cherry Blossoms and Sakura flavoured food. Summer is the season of Matsuris and firework displays, which brings me to my favourite season… Autumn. Around late October to early December the changing…
Typhoons and Earthquakes
When we first decided to move to Japan the language was the only thing we really worried about. We knew it would be a huge cultural change and there were going to be difficulties with communication but we never once considered the number of natural events that happen here compared to the UK and how…
That’s My Type of Travel
Over a year ago I wrote a post titled ‘A Time to Travel’ (Read here) which was basically a manifesto of what I wanted to achieve when travelling South East Asia later that year. I compared our travelling experiences so far to a type of window shopping where we would stick to easy to reach…
The Travelling Holts 