As printed in STORIED Magazine Volume 3: The Cedar Issue. Walking through the narrow streets of Tokyo’s Edogawa ward, under the cover of an umbrella in the middle of spring, I notice a transition from skyscrapers to a patchwork of modern, low-rise buildings with a family neighborhood feel. There’s a nursery school, a few soba…

As published on THE KINDCRAFT. Surrounded by lush green mountains on the island of Kyushu lies the famous porcelain town of Arita. I arrived the day before a typhoon was expected to roll through the island. Inexperienced with natural disasters in foreign lands, I considered if I should change my itinerary and just bunker down…

As published on Fodor’s Travel: “He Built a Temple Complex to Honor His Mother. What Are You Doing for Mother’s Day?” While we all generally want to thank our mothers for bringing us into this world in one way or another, industrialist-turned-Buddhist priest, Kozo Kosanji, might have gone a bit overboard. We should be so…

A visit to Izumi Riki Seisakujo in Sakai, Osaka Japan, as featured on JTCO: Japanese Traditional Culture Promotion & Development. Forged knives have been sought after and revered worldwide for years, which, once you know the process involved, it’s not hard to see why. Recently, I ventured into the old blacksmith neighborhoods of Sakai to…

As printed in Eighty Degrees Magazine: Volume 2. Recently, I had the pleasure of experiencing a private tea tasting at PLANTATION by Teakha in Hong Kong. As for the technique, they use a simplified fusion of two tea ceremony types: Taiwanese and Chinese gong fu. This means they incorporate a teapot and multiple small cups…

As published on STORIED Magazine. Nestled amongst gleaming rice fields against the backdrop of Hokkaido’s Asahi Mountain lies woodworking studio Craft & Design TANNO. For over 40 years, Norio Tanno has hand-crafted a variety of beautiful objects, such as business card cases and hexagonal tea canisters, in a way that creates a satisfying, soothing sound…