This Month on Maction Planet – August 2026

August sees Mac, Founder and Lead Guide of Maction Planet, galavanting around Spain and the UK!

Featured image: A visit to the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on 21 August yielded an unexpected find in the gift shop: a postcard by Ezen Designs featuring a remix of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, with the Royal Albert Hall sitting where Mount Fuji would normally be. It was produced to commemorate the Grand Sumo Tournament, which took place at the Hall in October 2025, only the second time in history the Japan Sumo Association had held a tournament outside Japan, 34 years after the first, also at the Royal Albert Hall, in 1991.

A couple of hours after the conclusion of my 20th Japaniversary, I boarded a Qatar Airways flight from Tokyo to Madrid via Doha. I was in the legendary Q-Suite, and this pillow rather neatly captured my spirits on departure: one side reads “Tokyo” in the Latin alphabet, the other in Arabic – طوكيو – surrounded by illustrations of Japan’s most iconic imagery!

Landing in Doha, I made straight for duty-free to check out the Japanese whisky shelf at Hamad International Airport. At the top of the display sits the Suntory Kogei collection, bottles I reviewed this month on Kanpai Planet [see below]. Also on show: the Yamazaki Distillers Reserve, Yamazaki 18, Yamazaki 12, and Chita, all of which I have reviewed on the channel – alongside others delivering a strong Suntory line-up… if you can afford them!

After a day and a half of adventures in Madrid, I walked to Atocha Station to catch my train to Cordoba. En route, I encountered Matcha Crew, a matcha, dessert and ice cream outfit. The matcha mafia are everywhere.

Triana, Seville’s ceramic heartland on the west bank of the Guadalquivir, was on the itinerary for some shopping. I walked past Tsuruta Ramen on Calle San Jorge.

After a wonderful week in Spain I flew to the UK on 11 August. I headed down to the Eden Project in Cornwall where I came face-to-face with ∞ Blue, a monumental 2018 installation by Studio Swine, the collaborative practice of Japanese architect Azusa Murakami and British artist Alexander Groves. At almost 9 metres tall and weighing 20 tonnes, the piece dominates the biome atrium: a towering ceramic form clad in tiles made from Cornish clay and oxide glazes, their patterning generated by an algorithm drawn from reaction-diffusion systems found in nature, from zebras to coral. From within the piece, 32 vortex cannons fire smoke rings into the space. The subject is the cyanobacterium, one of the world’s smallest living organisms, and the creature responsible for first developing oxygenic photosynthesis around 3 billion years ago.

I found myself in Cardiff on 16 August at the National Museum Wales in Cardiff, Homura I (Inferno I) by Japanese metalwork artist Takahiro Yede stopped me in my tracks. Made from nickel silver and bronze strips painstakingly intertwined and hammered into place, the piece was created spontaneously. Yede chose the title only after the work was finished, when he saw how closely it resembled licking flames. Described as a ‘new vanguard’ of Japanese metalwork, Yede received a Grand Prix at the Japan Traditional Arts and Crafts Exhibition and his work is held by the Tokyo National Museum. Homura I was acquired for Cardiff in 2011 via the Art Fund. Japan.

The next day I went to Chepstow Castle which has stood on its cliff above the River Wye since the 11th century. In the castle’s crafts area, I designed and made a Kanpai Planet coat of arms badge — the platform’s kanji seal set within a shield.

The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is the kind of place where you can lose an entire day. There are many Japan connections, obvious and subtle. Hungry Bear, a woodcut print by Coast Salish artist Jody Wilson from Northwest Coast, British Columbia, is an example of the latter. The work depicts a grizzly bear in the act of catching a salmon, its design characterised by the fluidity, symmetry and concern with proportion typical of Northwest Coast art, but Wilson himself cites Japanese woodcuts as an influence.

Blackwell’s bookshop on Broad Street is one of Oxford’s great institutions, but even venerable establishments have contemporary problems.

Rules on Maiden Lane in Covent Garden has been serving traditional British cuisine since 1798, making it London’s oldest restaurant. Its walls and surfaces are dense with memorabilia accumulated over more than two centuries — and among the curios on display is a brass-mounted card bearing a miniature Japanese flag and the sentence “We would like to invite you to dine at Rules. Please do come.” The restaurant has other Japan connectons: former head chef Rory Kennedy appeared on Iron Chef, battling Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai to a draw on rabbit before losing the pigeon tiebreaker. Sadly, Kennedy died in a fall at the restaurant shortly after the episode aired.

The National Railway Museum in York holds the only Series 0 Shinkansen on display outside Japan – donated by the Japanese government in 2001, and looking every bit as sleek as the day it was built. -where the bullet train sits alongside Mallard, the world’s fastest steam locomotive.

Finally, I made it to Edinburgh for the Fringe, one of the absolute highlights of my year! The Sumo Show Hirakuza had pitched up here, running at Underbelly’s George Square venue daily. With the Grand Sumo Tournament at the Royal Albert Hall still fresh in the memory, Japan’s national sport is having quite the moment in Britain.

The Royal Mile during the Edinburgh Fringe is never short of entertainment, but HeroMacro stopped the crowd entirely. The Japanese acrobatic duo — HERO, the ninja, hailing from Hiroshima, and MAKO, the geisha, from Kyoto — combine feats of strength and flexibility with Japanese cultural pageantry and a dry sense of humour that is, as their own billing claims, truly Japanese.

On 29 August I watched Tim Key’s Loganberry at the Pleasance Courtyard, a late-night poetry and comedy show from the 2009 Perrier Award winner, known to many as Sidekick Simon from Alan Partridge and, more recently, for playing a pigeon in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17. Key’s Japan travels, including ‘Mountain Fuji’ as he frequently refer to it as, feature in the show itself.

Here are Tim and I reunited after meeting in Tokyo in February 2023!

Two Kanpai Planet videos for you this month:

First up, two of Suntory’s most intriguing duty-free exclusives go head-to-head. The Suntory Kogei Collection: Yamazaki vs Hakushu Peated Malt Spanish Oak are put through the Kanpai Planet taste test. The packaging alone is worth talking about – a collaboration with Chiso, one of Kyoto’s most celebrated kimono houses. But packaging doesn’t end up in the glass. One bottle edges ahead. But does either one justify the price tag at around US$200 a bottle? Watch to find out!

And… 8 things I learnt from one month working at a Japanese Whisky distillery – the Rishiri Distillery to be precise. Join me as I mill grain, run mash, clean tanks, work the bottling line, and fill casks.

I lived on the island. I ate with the team. I sat in the meetings. And I came away with eight lessons that permanently changed how I think about whisky… and about the people who make it.

This is one of the videos I am most proud. The subject matter, the way it was filmed, the footage I captured solo in my one month on the remote island, the editing and everything that led up to it. Enjoy, and Kanpai!

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