A journey into Tokyo’s hidden fantasy worlds: from Yashio Hihokan’s uncanny doll museum to Akihabara’s sex emporiums, kawaii culture, vending machines and the strange coexistence of loneliness, desire and artificial intimacy in modern Japan.
Every place has its secrets if you’re willing to patiently dig under the surface. Exploring Tokyo’s secrets & dark nooks was the beginning of my trip around Japan, during which the koyo zensen, i.e. autumn foliage spotting, was not limited to nature or leaves, but became a research into the culture and its symbols under the theme of colour.
This is the second part of my New York trip saga. While the first one focused mostly on the island of Manhattan, now I’m going to look at the characteristics of some of the other islands and oasis within this great city. In a recent post about Luxembourg, I emphasised the country’s cultural and linguistic diversity. With New York, this…
Going to New York, I was concerned that it might not live up to the crazily high expectations I had of the city. But it actually exceeded them.
Luxembourg is not a popular destination, but if offers inspiration & relaxation, and the Melusina sculpture reminds us of the importance of self-care.
From Hollywood glitterati to desert off-gridders, impressions from California and American observations in 10 chapters – Part II
From Hollywood glitterati to desert off-gridders, impressions from California and American observations in 10 chapters.
A few years ago I wrote a blog post in which I shared my experiences and observations after one year of living in Portugal. It was very much a “should I stay or should I go” kind of article, as I had very mixed feelings about my life there. As it happened, three months after publishing the post I moved back to Warsaw and felt a great sense of relief. I also felt, having moved countries a good few times by that point, that perhaps I had had my share of packing and sending boxes back and forth, and perhaps the time had come to make Warsaw my permanent home.
The question I’m most frequently asked when meeting someone new is “So, how do you like living in Portugal?”. It’s also something I’m repeatedly asked when I visit my Polish home or friends in the UK, and despite my efforts to give as exhaustive answer as possible (for it really isn’t a matter of a simple “yeah it’s great” or…
Some weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting a friend in Berlin and on a Sunday afternoon found myself in Prenzlauer Berg, sitting at a lovely place with a somewhat ironic name, given how left-wing the city is, the Kapitalist Café. I was sitting there with a glass of wine, an oldskul notebook and a head full of thoughts and…
I celebrated the end of this year’s summer in Italy. This last-minute and fairly spontaneous holiday trip provided a much needed break after several weeks of hard work and disappointing weather. Deprived of work tools and all sorts of big city-type of stimuli, I turned to the simple pleasures: food, swimming, sunbathing, reading. And I devoured them all. My head,…