The original article was first published in this blog in July 2021.
I have always been happy to visit small towns when travelling. Unguided with maps or GPS , I enjoy simply walking around with no fixed plans, exploring and taking in the experiences and chance encounters that come my way.
While in Tokyo in 2017, I decided to take a side trip to Nakano, a ward of Tokyo which is just a 10-minute train ride from crowded and busy Shinjuku. I discovered a gem of a town, one filled with cherry blossoms trees in full bloom (my trip was in early-April), tranquility and most of all, the charms that come with travelling without any pre-planned itinerary.
Instead of a lengthy article struggling for words to fully describe my side trip to Nakano, I decided that a short video is a more appropriate medium to share my experience of the magic of Nakano.
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I visited Nakano as a side trip while in Tokyo in the spring of 2017. Just minutes away from Shinjuku, Nakano is a world away from the hustle and bustle that defines Shinjuku.
Here, serenity reigns. Being a rural area, the ambience is all about being slow paced and quiet. This is also an amazing place to catch sakura blooms (cherry blossoms) away from the crowds of central Tokyo.
This video consisted of photos I took of Nakano. From the moment I alighted from then train at Nakano Station, walked around and enjoyed the surrounding areas and finally returning to the Station for my trip back to Shinjuku.
These photos are presented in this short video in chronological order, based on my walking tour of Nakano.
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Next trip....... I had just returned from a short weekend getaway to Hong Kong, my second trip to the city this year. While there will likely to be at least a couple more trips to Hong Kong again this year, I am thinking of what other cities I can and should visit next. Because these will mainly be short 4-5 days getaways including over the weekends, there can be no faraway destinations relative to my home city, Singapore. This effectively rules out any sojourns to Europe or North America. Candidates for such short getaway trips thus include only regional destinations such as Bali, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and Shenzhen, all of which I had previously visited multiple times over the years. Manila, which I have never before visited, is a prime consideration. But any visit to Manila will have to be towards the end of the year because the paranoid traveller in me want to avoid the typhoon season that usually occurs in the middle of the year and we are currently in the middle ...
Not all Starbucks we encountered during our travels are the same. Many times, the Starbucks stores blend themselves into the local culture and style. One such example is the Starbucks store I encountered when visiting Kyoto's Kiyomizu-dera. Nestled amongst the narrow lanes in the neighbourhood of the famous temple , this store blended itself into the local architecture so seamlessly that I almost missed it except for the familiar logo mounted at the side of the small building structure. An Edo-style Starbucks? Definitely looks like to me! 🏯 Edo-style Starbucks, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan (2026)
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