First published in 1937 this is a collection of articles written by the author under the pseudonym 'Waseda Eisaku' for the Japan Tourist Bureau's magazine over twenty five years. Intended to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of cultivated tourists from abroad by giving the insider's view of all things Japanese, it was published as a book just before the outbreak of World War II.

Writing in the first person, Katsumata becomes both guide and confidante, writing about his own travel experiences in Japan and about Japanese customs and practices that interest him, such as traditional incense ceremonies, or fishing with rod and creel. This personal approach results in an unusual selection of topics and itineraries including tray landscapes, old Japanese clocks, hot springs, Japanese humour, sumo wrestling, pines in Japanese scenery, the Japanese sun flag and Buddhist temple bells. The author not only describes, but draws the reader into his own experiences - his joy on buying an antiquarian book he cannot really afford, the monotony he feels when travelling too long through snowy landscapes, the delight he takes in telling you that the best bait for carp fishing is sweet potato. Katsumata's unconventional choice of subjects and his informal and individualistic writing style make this a refreshingly different guide to Japan, and a valuable record of the period in which it was written.

Can a tiny vehicle provide the space to rebuild a life? Thunderstone: a sculpted & fearless memoir from the award-winning author of Fifty Words for Snow

A woman’s tale of the transformative power of walking Britain’s ancient pilgrim paths. ‘Phoebe Smith is a splendid writer and an inspiring traveller’ Bill Bryson Faced with turning 35 – and seeing friends settle down, get married, have kids – Phoebe Smith found herself ending a long�term relationship, considering giving up her dream job and asking herself what actually is the point of… everything? On an assignment to walk the most famous pilgrimage in the world – the Camino de Santiago, in northern Spain – Phoebe experiences a moment of self-discovery shared by many who travel these ancient trails. And so, having spent a lifetime in solo exploration of unfamiliar places, she suddenly resolved to return to her native Britain and follow in the footsteps of generations of saints (and sinners) in the hope of ‘finding herself’ once more and confronting the things that scared her the most. But what is a pilgrimage? Why are so many people undertaking them now? How do you become a pilgrim? And how do you know what you are seeking? These are the questions Phoebe grapples with as she undertakes a series of journeys – some familiar and some little-known – the length and breadth of the British Isles. Along the way she contemplates love and loss in her life, the role of contemplation and silence in pilgrimage, and the sudden camaraderie shared endeavour brings. Until, high on a windswept cliff, she arrives at an epiphany: the ending of one trail is always the start of another.

The unique, moving and heartwarming true story of an unlikely friendship which captured imaginations around the world . . . 'I can't remember the last time I read a book that made me smile so continuously' 5***** Reader Review 'How could a penguin transform so many lives? Read it and see. You'll not regret it' 5***** Reader Review 'Delightful, uplifting, enjoyable, fun and beautifully written' 5***** Reader Review _______ Tom Michell is in his roaring twenties: single, free-spirited and seeking adventure. He has a plane ticket to South America, a teaching position in a prestigious Argentine boarding school, and endless summer holidays. What he doesn't need is a pet. What he really doesn't need is a pet penguin. But while on holiday in Uruguay he spots a penguin struggling in an oil slick and knows he has to help. And then the penguin refuses to leave his side . . . Clearly Tom has no choice but to smuggle it across the border, through customs, and back to school. He names him Juan Salvador. Whether it's as the rugby team's mascot, the housekeeper's confidant, the host at Tom's parties or the most flamboyant swimming coach in world history, Juan Salvador transforms the lives of all he meets - including Tom, who discovers a compadre like no other . . . _______ AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 2 'A much-beloved tale about a much-beloved bird . . . Heart-warmingly eccentric' Guardian 'So touching that I didn't want it to end. I really loved this book' Michael Bond, creator of Paddington 'Charming' Daily Mail 'One of the most touching tales we've read all year' Heat

Rome Through the Mist: Walks Among the Fountains of the Eternal City invites readers to join Joe Gartman, long-time culture columnist for Italia! Magazine, on a journey among 80 of Rome's celebrated fountains, to find a more intimate way of experiencing the Eternal City. On foot with book in hand, or simply in imagination, each chapter takes readers on a vividly described walk, enhanced with colorful, subtly revealing photographs of Roman life. Every fountain in Rome tells a story; every story is about Rome: her history, her legends, and her extraordinary people, from poets to popes, artists to models, architects to emperors. Every street, piazza, wall and garden that contains a fountain has a past worth knowing. You are invited to follow the paths in this book, with 15 different turn-by-turn walking tours, 17 maps, and 182 photos. There are plenty of hints, too, about things to see and experience along the way, especially the matchless artistic treasures that await behind unexpected doors. In your armchair or on your feet, journey from Trevi's torrents to the Naiad's naughty nymphs; from the quiet basins in Piazza San Simeone to Bernini's mighty Four Rivers in Piazza Navona; from the Dark Fountains in Villa Borghese to the charming lionesses in Piazza del Popolo; and listen to the voices of the waters.

One woman, one bike and one richly entertaining, perception-altering journey of discovery. In 2015, as the Syrian War raged and the refugee crisis reached its peak, Rebecca Lowe set off on her bicycle across the Middle East. Driven by a desire to learn more about this troubled region and its relationship with the West, Lowe's 11,000-kilometre journey took her through Europe to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, the Gulf and finally to Iran. It was an odyssey through landscapes and history that captured her heart, but also a deeply challenging cycle across mountains, deserts and repressive police states that nearly defeated her. Plagued by punctures and battling temperatures ranging from -6 to 48C, Lowe was rescued frequently by farmers and refugees, villagers and urbanites alike, and relied almost entirely on the kindness and hospitality of locals to complete this living portrait of the modern Middle East. This is her evocative, deeply researched and often very funny account of her travels - and the people, politics and culture she encountered. 'Terrifically compelling ... bursting with humour, adventure and insight into the rich landscapes and history of the Middle East. Lowe recounts the beauty, kindnesses and complexities of the lands she travels through with an illuminating insight. A wonderful new travel writer.' Sir Ranulph Fiennes

George Sand recounts the story of her 1838 winter in Majorca, a winter she passed in the company of Frederick Chopin. She describes the natural beauties of Majorca as well as the rumblings of approaching war.

As America's finest writer, Mark Twain could make entertaining reading -- and great literature -- out of almost anything. Here we have a book begun out of adversity. The great novelist, satirist, and public celebrity was broke, ruined by various ill-advised investment schemes; but, being a man of honor on a public stage, he resolved to pay off every cent of his crushing debt. He did so by going on a two-year, round-the-world lecture tour, where he spoke to sold-out houses in Europe, India, and Australia, all the while gathering material for yet another best-selling travel book, filled with his trademark wit and brilliant observation. Even after more than a century this book is still a must-read. Whatever has been forgotten about the times and places Twain describes he has recreated for us, vividly and forever.

This study examines and explains how British explorers visualized the African interior in the latter part of the nineteenth century, providing the first sustained analysis of the process by which this visual material was transformed into the illustrations in popular travel books. At that time, central Africa was, effectively, a blank canvas for Europeans, unknown and devoid of visual representations.

While previous works have concentrated on exploring the stereotyped nature of printed imagery of Africa, this study examines the actual production process of images and the books in which they were published in order to demonstrate how, why, and by whom the images were manipulated. Thus, the main focus of the work is not on the aesthetic value of pictures, but in the activities, interaction, and situations that gave birth to them in both Africa and Europe.

Part of a seven-volume facsimile set, this volume comprises firsthand accounts of France in the 1790s. It includes Helen Maria Williams' letters which narrate the fall of Robespierre in 1794 and her 1798 book on Switzerland which comments sceptically on the necessary coexistence of liberty with peace.

Esprit de Battuta: Alone Across Africa on a Bicycle is the story of one woman's exciting travel adventure through Africa before mobile phones and before easy Internet access alone and on a bicycle.

Australian-born and London-based Pamela Watson had a comfortable, if overworked existence, as a management consultant but yearned for freedom and the adventure. 'That's it!'; she thought. 'I'll cycle across Africa!'

Join her on this intoxicating journey that began as a search for adventure and turned into a journey of self-discovery. Along the way she discovers companionship and compassion, and injustices that burn through the page. Cycling for a year and a half, covering nearly 15,000 kilometres and crossing seventeen countries, she encountered an Africa rarely reported in the media and experienced first-hand the violent tinderbox of local politics. She discovers women are the backbone of rural Africa and is shocked to learn their responsibilities are not matched by their access to basic human rights.

Now in its third edition, Esprit de Battuta: Alone Across Africa on a Bicycle is a must-read for all armchair adventurers, those who are curious about the everyday lives of the people of the rural villages of Africa and those who dare to challenge the status quo.

Of all those admirable and doughty Victorian lady-travellers Miss Amelia Edwards is surely one of the brightest lights, and this, her classic introduction to ancient Egypt, still stands up like an obelisk above the bulk of learned tomes and endlessly churned out travel guides. Straightened means obliged her to earn her living, and she was already a successful writer and a talented artist and musician when, in middle-age, bad weather unexpectedly changed her life. Her painting holiday in France sabotaged, she took a boat from Marseilles to Alexandria, and hired a dahabiyah to venture up the Nile. The rest of her life she devoted tirelessly to the setting-up of professional excavation in Egypt, founding the Egypt Exploration Fund (with Reginald Stuart Poole) and establishing the first chair of Egyptology in England at University College, initially occupied by her protege Flinders Petrie. Nothing of the contagious enthusiasm and wonder she conveys, as the beauties of Egypt are daily unfolded before her, is lost from the subsequent research and painstaking erudition she crams into these pages. The joy is as fresh as when first felt, and the reader feels privileged to share these experiences with her.

COLONSAY: ONE OF THE HEBRIDES. ITS PLANTS: THEIR LOCAL NAMES AND USES, LEGENDS, RUINS, AND PLACE-NAMES- GAELIC NAMES OF BIRDS, FISHES, ETC. CLIMATE, GEOLOGICAL FORMATION, ETC. by MURDOCH M C NEILL. First publshed in 1910. - PREFACE: A COLLECTION of the plants of his native island was begun by the writer in 1903, during a period of convalescence, and was continued as a recreation, from time to time, as occasion offered. In 1908 the idea of making use of the material accumulated and arranging it for publication was conceived, and to put it into effect a final endeavour was made that season to have the plant list of the island as complete as the circumstances would permit. In preparing the little volume for the press, the lack of works of reference was found a serious drawback. The following publications were found most helpful Bentham and Hookers British Flora Witherings English Botany Camerons Gaelic Names of Plants Hogans Irish and Scottish Gaelic Names ofHerbs, Plants, Trees, etc. Gregorys History of the West Highlands Oransay and its Monastery, by F. C. E. MXeill Colla Ciotach Mac Ghilleasbuig, by Prof. Mackinnon Celtic Monthly, Sept. 1903-Jan. 1904 Geikies Scenery of Scotland Notes on the Geology of Colon- say and Oransay, by Prof. Geikie The Two Earth-Movements of Colonsay, by W. B. Wright, B.A., F.G.S. Sketch of the Geology of the Inner Hebrides, by Prof. Heddle Journals of the Scottish Meteorological Society Address on the Climate of the British Isles, by A. Watt, M.A., etc... The writer trusts that much of the matter contained in the following pages may be regarded as typical of and applicable in many respects to the Western Islands as a whole. He would gladly have entered intogreater detail regarding the old-time industries, place-names, topography, traditions, and folk-lore of Colonsay, but the general reader may be of opinion that enough has been said on these matters in a work primarily intended to treat of the flora of the island. KILORAN, COLONSAY, . December 1909. M.M c . CONTENTS include: CHAP. PAGB 1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION . . . . . . 3 2. CLIMATE . . ... 45 3. GEOLOGICAL FORMATION . . . . . 54 4...

As read on BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week' Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 'Sherman's is a special book. Every sentence, every thought she has, every question she asks, every detail she notices, offers something. The Bells of Old Tokyo is a gift . . . It is a masterpiece.' - Spectator For over 300 years, Japan closed itself to outsiders, developing a remarkable and unique culture. During its period of isolation, the inhabitants of the city of Edo, later known as Tokyo, relied on its public bells to tell the time. In her remarkable book, Anna Sherman tells of her search for the bells of Edo, exploring the city of Tokyo and its inhabitants and the individual and particular relationship of Japanese culture - and the Japanese language - to time, tradition, memory, impermanence and history. Through Sherman's journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art-form, The Bells of Old Tokyo presents a series of hauntingly memorable voices in the labyrinth that is the metropolis of the Japanese capital: An aristocrat plays in the sea of ashes left by the Allied firebombing of 1945. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. A sculptor eats his father's ashes while the head of the house of Tokugawa reflects on the destruction of his grandfather's city ('A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness'). The result is a book that not only engages with the striking otherness of Japanese culture like no other, but that also marks the arrival of a dazzling new writer as she presents an absorbing and alluring meditation on life through an exploration of a great city and its people.

W.A de Klerk was een van die voortreflikste literêre joernaliste in Afrikaans. In Drie Swerwers Oor Die Einders, vir die eerste maal in 1953 uitgegee, sit hy en twee vriende hul reis deur die uithoeke van Namibië (toe Suidwes-Afrika) voort.

Hy vertel op boeiende wyse van hulle wedervaringe tussen die Boesmans saam met die legendariese P.J. Schoeman, en van hulle omswerwinge in Damaraland en die Kaokoveld, deur Ovamboland en die streke om die Kunene. Hulle doel was om so ver moontlik die pad van die Dorslandtrek deur die noordwestelike hoek van Namibië te volg, en so kruis hul pad met talle kleurryke karakters.

Drie Swerwers Oor Die Einders is ’n ryk geskakeerde boek vol wetenswaardighede.

Anthony Doerr has received many awards -- from the New York Public Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Library Association. Then came the Rome Prize, one of the most prestigious awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and with it a stipend and a writing studio in Rome for a year. Doerr learned of the award the day he and his wife returned from the hospital with newborn twins.

Exquisitely observed, Four Seasons in Rome describes Doerr's varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keats -- the chroniclers of Rome who came before him -- and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighborhood, whose clamor of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself.

This intimate and revelatory book is a celebration of Rome, a wondrous look at new parenthood, and a fascinating story of a writer's craft -- the process by which he transforms what he sees and experiences into sentences.

When Sybil Hall Nowell set off from San Francisco one February morning in 1935 on a round-the-world trip with her husband Jack, the energetic American couple fell into the embrace of the British Empire with great gusto. As they traveled through Australia and New Zealand and then through Africa up to Britain they delighted in the formality, civility, and good manners that defined at least the surface of the British imperial experience. During their four-month voyage, Sybil Nowell studiously wrote letters home at every stop, describing this calm and orderly world. Sybil Nowell's letters, introduced and edited here by Robert N. White (her grandson) who has provided useful historical and political commentary, portray the easy complacency of Empire that came with power, privilege, and prestige.