by Simon Rowe A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. ― FDR Sea kayaking isn’t an activity you hear much about, yet Japan’s coastline is made for travel-by-paddle. I have lived in Hyogo for 26 years and bought my first sea kayak in 2001 — a folding Folbot Greenland II — and later added an …Read More
Tag: Simon Rowe (Page 1 of 2)
Talk with Author Simon Rowe at David Duff’s home, April 14, 2024 Nine people gathered to listen to Simon Rowe talk about his phenomenal success in publishing and other things on April 14 in Kyoto. Thanks very much to David Duff for opening his home/library once again for an event. Due to the absence (by …Read More
By Simon Rowe The City Fathers call Omoide Yokocho by its official name—Memory Lane. Locals prefer ‘Piss Alley’. For me it’s a little of both: a place to sip cheap beer on a hot evening, to reminisce of my wayward youth, and maybe shoot the breeze with another seasoned drinker. Because that’s all you’ll meet …Read More
By Simon Rowe Stands to reason that in tough economic times, people spend less on luxuries and more on small pleasures—like beer, cigarettes, and Uniqlo underwear. A new rooftop beer garden opened in Himeji last week (two floors above Uniqlo), affording more skyline drinking space for the hard-working denizens of this town; another place for …Read More
This year, the Australia-Japan Society of Victoria warmly collaborated with Writers in Kyoto in offering a complimentary one-year membership for an exemplary piece submitted by an Australian author to our Kyoto Writing Competition. Simon Rowe’s “Diary of a Rickshaw Puller” was selected for this honor. Simon is an Australian writer based in Himeji, Japan and …Read More
by Simon Rowe The biggest robbery in Japanese history occurred on March 5, 2004, in Tokyo’s wealthy Ginza ward. It was carried out by a gang belonging to a loosely-knit criminal group of eastern Europeans who have come to be known as the ‘Pink Panther gang’. The loot — the Comtesse de Vendome — has …Read More
A traditional Japanese neighbourhood is a lot like a small fiefdom; it rolls with its own rules and rosters, elects its own committees, demands that its denizens perform seasonal duties such as river cleaning and shouldering a portable Shinto shrine at festival time, and is usually presided over by a big kahuna and his/her sidekick, a treasurer.
Greenhouse Bluesby Simon Rowe Last month a fortuitous thing happened. I discovered a large greenhouse beside the university where I work. It is used by the Faculty of Pharmacological Science to grow medicinal plants for research and is tended by a retinue of elderly men in powder-blue overalls who water and weed and keep the …Read More
‘Fragrant Harbor’ they called it. But Hong Kong was anything but fragrant the night Poh Seng Pang flew in. The air outside the terminal was dank, vegetative—like the smell of the Singapore River in wet season, or the streets of the Jurong Wholesale Market after a deluge. Poh found it strangely comforting. He checked his …Read More
Pearl City by Simon Rowe A Mami Suzuki Mystery Silhouetted against the noonday sky, the president of Tokai Pearls Ltd. stood at his suite window and surveyed the harbor. His gaze ranged from the shipyards and submarine docks of Kawasaki Heavy Industries to the Mosaic shopping mall and its slow-turning Ferris wheel, then to the …Read More
WiK Writing Competition
WiK Anthologies
The Nature of Kyoto (2023)
Eds. Lisa Twaronite Sone & Robert Weis
Foreword by Pico Iyer
Structures of Kyoto (2021)
Eds: Rebecca Otowa & Karen Lee Tawarayama
Foreword by Judith Clancy
Encounters with Kyoto (2019)
Eds: Jann Williams & Ian Josh Yates
Foreword by Juliet Winters Carpenter
Echoes (2017)
Eds: John Dougill, Amy Chavez, & Mark Richardson
Preface by Alex Kerr
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