Japan

The last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji started on this day in 1707. The eruption lasted for a couple of weeks and formed a new peak and crater on the south-eastern flank of the mountain. Despite regular seismic activity in…

Who doesn’t love monkeys? Today is Monkey Day – a day to appreciate and celebrate all simians. Some of our favourites are these macaques relaxing in hot springs in Japan. We like them so much we did a full post…

We've visited a handful of large-scale sculptures by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in the past, but because we love them so much we thought we'd do a comprehensive round up of as many as possible, in roughly chronological…

Almost six years ago I wrote a brief article for Google Sightseeing. Today marks my 200th full-length1 post, so I'm indulging myself with a look back at a few of my personal favourites. My first post was about the National…

The roster of the world's tallest statues is dominated by Buddhist figures, with most of the top ten (actually 11 because of a tie) being representations of the Buddha or Guanyin. While we've looked at Very Large Buddhas twice before…

Natural arches - also known as natural bridges - are formed when relatively soft rock is worn away by the action of tides, rivers or weather erosion, leaving behind a bridge-like structure of harder rock. Although there are thousands around…