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~Anette

As the travel enthusiast I am I always seek to explore new places I haven't yet been to. When I was in university I would spend my holiday backpacking South-East Asia, and recent years I've had the pleasure of visiting countries like Myanmar, Palao, the Philippines and the Maldives.
This year my darling and I decided to try out yet another unknown terrain; the Empire of Brunei. Doing our usual light research online (I usually don't do much research, as I prefer to go to a new destination with an open mind and just see what I stumble upon while I'm there) we soon figured out that there weren't many sources that could help us on the way. Hopefully, my series of posts about Brunei can be of help to some of you out there considering a visit to this beautiful country.

We stayed in Brunei for 5 days, and one of the things we did during the stay was the mandatory visit to the capital city Bandar Seri Begawan. For the first half of our trip, we stayed at the Palm Garden Hotel, which was located a 30 min walk from the city center. Although our hotel offered free transportation service we figured it would be nice to walk to town on the first day to explore our surroundings a bit.

It has already been 7 years since I first moved to Japan as an exchange student, and my darling and I had decided to celebrate the event with a little dose of luxury in between our busy daily life. With its long history as one of Tokyo's greatest hotels it was clear that there was no better way to celebrate the occasion than with a night at Hotel Okura Tokyo.

If you have the chance to travel around Tokushima and are looking for some unique cultural experience to try out along the way then a stop at a vine weaving experience might be a fun option for you. The vine tree is known in Japanese as "kazura", and is particularly known in Tokushima as an important material used for everything from weaving baskets to making great extension bridges.

During my recent trip to Tokushima and Iya valley we stopped by Experience Atelier Tsuzuki (the full Japanese name is 祖谷めんめ塾 古式そば かずら工芸 体験 都築) where we had the chance both to weave our own basket using local weaving techniques as well as making our own soba noodles.

Tokushima Prefecture in Shikoku is an area blessed by lush green nature and picturesque valleys. While the prefecture is struggling with a declining population resulting in abandoned villages and schools closing down there are still areas in the prefecture that are benefiting from the quiet natural surroundings that have lead to an increase in visiting tourists from near and far, and one of the popular places to visit is the Kazurabashi extension bridge in Iya, which is one of only three remaining suspension bridges in the area.

As many other rural areas of Japan the Tokushima Prefecture is struggling with the side effects of an aging society. Surrounded by nature the number of people is steadily decreasing, leading to abandoned villages (or villages with more scarecrows than people) and empty buildings. During my recent trip to Tokushima we stopped by a school that closed down some years ago and that has been turned into a posh cafe drawing tourists from near and far.