As Wikipedia notes, “The Yurikamome is Tokyo’s first fully automated transit system, controlled entirely by computers with no drivers on board.” It links Toyosu, where the old Tsukiji Fish Market relocated in 2018, and where the TeamLab Planets digital art museum is currently operating, with the manmade island of Odaiba across Tokyo Bay. On Odaiba, you can see the Life-Sized Unicorn Gundam statue, among other things.

Like the monorail at Tokyo Disney Resort (officially known as the Disney Resort Line), you can sit in front of the Yurikamome and look directly out the window without any human conductors obstructing the view. That seems like a good starting point for a long and winding post through the spring of 2023, from Toyosu to Odaiba to the robot apocalypse, and everything in-between.

I watched all eight episodes of The Mandalorian season 3, but I have to admit, my interest in this show has waned. At this point, it’s more for my job that I’ve been keeping up with it. (Two of the eight episodes were advance digital screeners, sent for the purposes of /Film coverage.)

Don’t get me wrong: there are worse ways to spend your workday (or Star Wars Day 2023) than writing about Star Wars TV, and I still managed to summon up 1,500+ words on R5-D4, the galaxy’s most sympathetic droid. But if the aim of The Mandalorian is to be like a Saturday afternoon serial of the kind that inspired the young George Lucas, it feels less like a matinee and more like something syndicated, cheap and televisual.

Happy Star Wars Day to all those who celebrate. It’s May the Fourth (Be With You) and there’s a new batch of Star Wars: Visions episodes hitting Disney+ today. We’re also just two weeks removed from the season 3 finale of The Mandalorian, and we’re coming up on the 40th anniversary of Return of the Jedi this month. All that seemed like a good excuse to dust off my Star Wars in Japan portfolio, especially since one episode of Star Wars: Visions Volume 2 hails from a Tokyo-based animation studio. This is appropriate since a Tokyo art exhibition, also named Star Wars: Visions, actually preceded the animation anthology of that name, which is streaming now.

In my last post, covering Nanzenji Temple and the Keage Incline, I neglected to mention that the temple is where Tetsugaku no michi, the Philosopher’s Path, terminates in Kyoto. This walking course runs about a mile and a quarter along a steep canal with hundreds of sakura trees hanging over it, so it’s a popular stretch for cherry blossom viewing when it comes alive with flowers in late March and early April. The course begins along the approach to Ginkaku-ji, another famous temple in Kyoto, so you could visit it first and then follow the Philosopher’s Path down to Nanzen-ji.

In Kyoto, if you want to avoid the gaggle of tourists packed into slow-moving buses, it can be more comfortable now to ride the subway sometimes. Nanzenji is one famous temple located within walking distance of the subway, and when you exit Keage Station in late March or early April, you’ll have the option of walking along the railway tracks to do some cherry blossom viewing on the Keage Incline.

Reachable by express train from Kyoto Station in less than an hour, Nara’s Todai-ji is a temple built on a massive scale. Everything about it feels larger than life: from the wooden pillars of its Great South Gate, Nandaimon, which bills itself as Japan’s largest temple entrance gate, to its equally mammoth Great Buddha Hall, Daibutsuden, which holds what is said to be the world’s largest bronze Buddha statue (via Japan Today).

Walking to the temple from Kintetsu Nara Station will take you through Nara Park, where deer roam freely and can be fed with 200-yen shika-senbei (deer rice crackers). If you’re there when the cherry blossoms are blooming, as we were just last weekend, you can maybe even lure one of the deer over to a sakura tree and come away with a snapshot of the sacred animal against a backdrop of blue skies, green grass, and pink flowers.

Next week, we are headed back to the Kansai region for cherry blossom season in Kyoto. Before we go, I wanted to share one final post related to Universal Studios Japan, which we visited on our last trip to Kansai in January.

I had an article go up on GaijinPot in February detailing “5 Things to Know Before You Go to Universal Studios Japan.” The first thing covered there is how “certain rides are exclusive to” the USJ park in Osaka. One of those is Jaws, which is such a classic that I had to give it its own dedicated post here.

This post expands on that recent Jaws one with a look at five more things unique to USJ: not just rides, but also photo ops and hotel views.

When I was still working as a teacher, one of my students told me a story about a person they knew in the Tohoku region, who narrowly evaded death on March 11, 2011, the day the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami hit. This person was up on a roof, behind another tall building where more people had gathered, thinking they would be safe on higher ground. The tsunami wave struck the tall building, breaking against it in such a way that it shielded the lower roof where this person was standing. They survived; the other people were not so lucky.

That’s just one story. The Tohoku disaster resulted in almost 20,000 deaths, leaving the region devastated for years to come. You can feel the weight of that number even more when you’re standing in the empty Japan National Stadium on the anniversary of 3/11, as I did this week. The new National Stadium was built for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, which event organizers billed as the “Recovery and Reconstruction Games.” However, even after the Olympics were postponed for the first time in history — so that they landed in 2021, a decade after the disaster — not everyone had recovered.

In 2017, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the port of Kobe opening, the city installed a new “Be Kobe” monument in Meriken Park. It quickly became a popular photo spot, and in recent travels, I’ve noticed a trend of other cities across Japan “going Kobe,” you might say. Everywhere you look, it’s as if there’s another city with its name in big letters against a different backdrop.

Behind the “Be Kobe” monument is the Kobe Meriken Park Oriental Hotel, which opened in 1995, months after the Great Hanshin earthquake struck. The monument is also within walking distance of the Port of Kobe Earthquake Memorial.

For most stateside theme park goers, Universal’s Jaws ride is a thing of the past. Once a staple of Universal Studios Florida, the ride closed there in 2012 to make way for the expanded Wizarding World of Harry Potter. There’s one place in the world, however, where you can still ride it, and that is Universal Studios Japan, a.k.a. USJ.