Starting on April 1, 2013, over 70 percent of supermarkets in Shiga Prefecture will charge 5 yen for a plastic shopping bag. Some…
Updated: March 27, 2023 Here are my favorite cherry blossoms (called sakura in Japanese) in Shiga. They bloom in April, starting with southern Shiga…
NHK TV news in Otsu reported an interesting bit of news on Feb. 26, 2013 about the governor of Kyoto stating that he…
Updated: Jan. 4, 2017 Plum blossoms, called ume (梅) in Japanese, have absolutely the sweetest and most pacifying fragrance of all the flowers in…
Went to see sumo on January 25, 2013, the 13th day of the New Year’s sumo tournament at the Kokugikan sumo arena in…
This is an island in the Seto Inland Sea in Yamaguchi Prefecture. When seeing this kanji name (大津島), those of us in Shiga cannot…
What seemed to be totally out of the blue, our Shiga Governor Yukiko Kada has formed a new political party called Nippon Mirai…
I recently visited Seian University of Art and Design in western Otsu (near Ogoto Onsen Station on the JR Kosei Line) for the first time. (In…