I was inspired to do this post after realising how many locations I recognised from shows and games I've played after visiting Japan. You will probably too once you've been since so many fictional works are based on real life locations and the great thing is you won't have to go out of your way to find these places unlike say Makoto...

Yusaku Godai is a "ronin", a student waiting for his next chance to pass university entrance exams. To make things worse, he lives in a shared rundown apartment called the "Ikkoku Apartment" with a group of inconsiderate and strange neighbours. Despite his best efforts to study and pass, they constantly harass and use his room for...

It was our last day in Japan before we fly back to Scotland tomorrow. So, being a big fan of Makoto Shinkai's 5 Centimetres per Second (5cm) I just had to visit some of the locations that were located around Tokyo. Note: The location hunting wasn't done in order and this wasn't a full day dedicated to 5cm location hunting. You will see the...

It was back to Tokyo today. Finally goodbye to those "sauna" hotel rooms in Nagoya! However, check-in time wasn't until 3pm so we decided it would be best if we just left our luggage in lockers instead of travelling back and forth just to leave our luggage with the hotel. There weren't many days left before we return to the UK so my friend...

Well, after a day's break of wandering around shops, it was back to touring the land of the rising sun. While I'm a big fan of Japanese games and Anime, I was also interested in Japan's culture thanks to all the TV programmes I grew up watching such as documentaries and travel programmes so I decided we should go visit a rural village while...

Ah yes, Ghibii Museum! This place is so busy you'll have to book 3 months in advance if you want a chance of getting in. Especially during the holiday seasons. It was either a JR train to Mitaka Station or a Keio train to Kichijoji. We chose Keio even though we had a JR Pass because it was faster by a 5 minutes or so. I read the route from Mitaka...

Celebrating Doraemon's 30th anniversary this year is another annual feature length animation "Nobita no Ningyo Taikaisen". Taking a break from the re-makes we see Doraemon, Nobita and friends meeting an underwater race that as usual, starts off another adventure that reminds us to take good care of nature. The Japanese DVD is out...

The rental DVD is out for this year's Doraemon movie, "The New Record of Nobita Spaceblazer" as it seems to be officially known and someone was kind enough to dump it onto the web. I've only watched half of the original 1981 movie because the VCD copy I have is missing the second disc so I won't be able to make a comparison but, it seems they...

Yes, I still like watching Doraemon. Laugh all you want =P Almost forgot about this Nobita and the Legend of the Green Giant from 2008 but, better late than never. This is one of the better new Doraemon movies I've seen full of comedy and less repetitive talking animals material. I'm liking the modern animation style, artwork and the...

The Doraemon movie remakes continue after this year's "Green Giant" and they don't seem to be doing it in any particular order... For 2009, a remake of the 1981 "The Records of Nobita, Space Blazer" is due which, is the movie that I only watched half of I think because the second VCD was missing from the copy we had. So, I won't be able to...