About
Origins
Rekall in Japan is a blog by Ingrid Stojnic, one of the founders of Rekall, a web design and applications studio since 2002. Ingrid has a master degree in Sinology from Venice University Ca’ Foscari. She lived in Shanghai for a year where she specialised in the etymology of Chinese Characters. She was always interested in the complex world of characters, its meaning and intrinsic connections. While pursuing further a design education at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, she experimented possible visualisations of Chinese Characters in the digital world.
At the same time she became interested in Japanese culture and Japan itself – a place she always wanted to visit, and started following secondary education in Japanese language.
Getting to know the culture, people and language better, being and travelling around Japan opened new visions and inspirations, both for work and personally.
She has been visiting Japan since 2015 multiple times a year, and hopefully plans to continue going back to this special and unique world every year.
This blog is more a collection of simple tips, places and best practices to facilitate your trip than a poetic interpretation of the trips she made. The latter she leaves to each individual to create.
Travelling to Japan
By first sight organising a trip to Japan to less known places and smaller locations asks for some preparation. The websites are barely in English, public transport is sometimes scrase and the language can be a huge barrier. Japanese don’t use email so much. Seasons are also a big factor to consider as many locations are closed until late spring due to snow or harsh weather. Good preparation is the key.
While trying not to state the obvious that can be found in every travel blog, the places she visited, things she ate, the trips and hikes all contributed in becoming more and more in love with Japan: it’s never the same and you always learn something new. Thus sharing this is a big pleasure.
Note: Most of our travels happen by train – so a lot of recommendations are based on locations nearby stations or activities that facilitate train travel.