For the second edition of Bluelist, I wrote a profile of Japan’s Tohoku region.
‘Profile: Tohoku’ by Simon Sellars from Bluelist 2, Lonely Planet Publications, November 2006.
TOHOKU
Grim Up North?
They call Tohoku the Japanese ‘deep south’ (even though it’s up north), a place where Japanese city slickers simply won’t go. Not only is Tohoku reckoned to […]
‘Treading Lightly on the ‘Galapagos of Japan’ by Simon Sellars, published in Code Green, Lonely Planet Publications, May 2006.
Ecotourism may be the world’s fastest growing travel trend but you’d be forgiven for thinking it never caught on in Japan. Relentless urbanisation has destroyed much of the country’s natural beauty; the government insists on hunting […]
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Bluelist is a fairly newish title from Lonely Planet. It collects the hottest travel trends from around the world, based on suggestions from LP readers, and extrapolates them into top-ten lists and feature articles. I worked on the title firstly as a consultant, testing out prototype formats and templates, adding feedback and future directions, […]
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In the second half of 2004 I was again on assignment for Lonely Planet, this time in northern Japan. I updated and rewrote the Northern Honshu chapter (35,000 words), and this was published in LP’s Japan guidebook in October 2005. I’m only including excerpts from my introductory and special-subject material, rather than accommodation and […]
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Osaka Lights. Photo: Simon Sellars.
In the second half of 2004 I was travelling around northern Japan on assignment for Lonely Planet. I was also commissioned by LP to maintain a blog of my trip. The entire blog archive is here, but I’ve reproduced one of my favourite entries below.
‘My First Earthquake’ by Simon Sellars. Published […]
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The Claw Girl: photo by Beatka Provis
by Simon Sellars
‘Life’s Journey: In Search of the Real Japan’. Originally published in the Age newspaper’s Travel supplement, May 15 2004.
Two years ago I visited Tokyo. I was in Japan to see my friend B—–, an English teacher in the northern port of Ishinomaki. We hadn’t seen each […]
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interview by Simon Sellars
Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 20 October 2003.
There’s a unique sense of overload for the first-time visitor to Tokyo. Intricate layers-upon-layers of ever-shifting urban culture crush the hapless tourist, who’s invariably pressed up against the very bottom layer like a stuffed pheasant under glass.
If this is you, get on the web and […]
interview by Simon Sellars
Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 6 August 2003.
Japanese culture, it would seem, has always contained a rich vein of magic, mysticism and mind power running through its myths and legends. Is there any connection between this tradition and modern-day UFO sightings? According to Junichi Kato, Director of OUR-J (The Organisation of UFO […]
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interview by Simon Sellars
Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 3 January 2003.
Do you remember ‘hardcore’?
As a style of dance music, it’s become a historical footnote, the sound of rave’s innocence: primitive, immature music for immature people. Supposedly we’ve all grown beyond that — haven’t we? Only gurners and E-monsters listen to hardcore, these days — apparently. […]
