Archive

Getting in I don’t think this was entirely legal. You see, I had heard about an amusement park in the Japanese city of Nara that had been abandoned – just left as it was and untouched for years – and it had intrigued me. I had decided that I wanted to see it for myself ...

Japan’s penis festival in Kawasaki The enormous pink penis catches the light as I approach it. There’s no glint of shame as it exposes itself to the crowd. It’s the centre of attention, with throngs of Japanese people pushing to get closer to the engorged phallus. In a country normally so obsessed with decorum, it’s ...

Tokyo cat cafe Humans seem to have always needed the comfort of animal companionship. That warm furry body lying next to you on the couch; the smiling innocent face at the door when you get home; the non-judgemental excitement of play. So it’s often hard for people who are forbidden from having pets their whole ...

Meguro Parasitological Museum, Tokyo, Japan Why would anyone want to go and look at tapeworms? It’s the question I’m asking myself as I walk up to the entrance of this museum in Tokyo. It’s not any old museum – no history, artwork, demonstrations, cultural artefacts. This is a museum of parasites: the Meguro Parasitological Museum, ...

Eating fried tarantula As you travel around the world, you end up trying a lot of the local cuisine. Most of it is delicious – like the gozleme in Turkey. Some of it is hard to find – like these mushrooms in Spain. And some it is just downright weird and revolting – like the ...

You know those moments when every stereotype you have about a nationality is realised? I had one of them the other evening in a hostel in Austria. It might not surprise you to hear that the nationality in question was American. (Cue slightly off-key rendition of Star Spangled Banner.) I was trying to get some ...

The gnomes in Wroclaw, Poland It starts with just one of them. One little guy, all bronzed and steady, looking up at you from a pavement in Wroclaw. He’s a blend between a gnome and a dwarf – for the sake of this conversation, let’s call him a gnome. This guy isn’t your usual garden ...

Parque el Desafio, Gaiman, Argentina For almost two decades Joaquin Alonso collected the scraps that others regarded as trash. Things destined for the dumps were hoarded and cared for, given a new lease on life. From the rubbish of others, the Argentine created works of art. He collected bottles, can, scraps of metal – anything ...

Tierra Santa, Buenos Aires, Argentina We’ve all heard about the kids who beg their parents for a trip to Disneyland. Perhaps you even were one of those kids. What you don’t often hear, though, are stories about children begging to be taken to a theme park all about Jesus. “Mummy, I want to go and ...

Angola prison rodeo, Louisiana * Photography was not allowed so all images are courtesy of http://angolarodeo.com/ A maximum security prison in the economically-depressed and socially-repressed part of Louisiana is not the sort of place you should want to end up. But it was exactly where we were heading. We were going to go past the ...