Category Archives: Others

【News】 Fire your imagination (April 12, 2015)

-Bonsai Art Museum (Saitama-shi, Saitama Prefecture)- Kotaro Yamada The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, Saitama, is the world’s first and only publicly-run bonsai museum where visitors can enjoy looking at masterpieces of bonsai and learn how to appreciate its history. Located in Saitama-shi, Saitama Prefecture, which is known for having many local bonsai nurseries and experts since the Taisho Era, it’s expected to play an important role in promoting Japanese culture. “You’ll find it more interesting when you look it at from underneath as if you are a dwarf,” said Shinichiro Hayashi, a 35-year-old curator of the museum and his advice was very true with a 95 centimeter tall Chaenomeles sinensis … Continue reading

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【News】 10,000 “matobi” bonfires (March 29, 2015)

-Lightings to welcome spring and ancestors’ souls (Kamikoani Village, Akita Prefecture)- Kotaro Yamada On the Spring Equinox Day, great big Chinese characters are lit up on fire in the villages alongside the Koani River in the northern part of Akita Prefecture. The seven-day period starting three days before Spring Equinox Day and ending three days after is called “higan”, which is a time when people in Japan pay their respects to ancestors. These special bonfires are called “matobi”, which literally means “10,000 bonfires,” and placed on the night of the spring equinox to entertain ancestors’ souls. This unique festival is held in Kamikoani and other villages in Akita Prefecture as … Continue reading

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【News】 Boys be strong and generous like great samurai worriers (March 23, 2015)

  Tetsuya Onda The entire wall is covered by Samurai warriors who vibrantly stare at you. Don’t worry. This is pretty much the norm for Musha-e-no-Sato studio at this time of the year and the warriors are printed on Musha-e Nobori, which are Japanese banners with paintings of armed Samurai worriers or Shoki (a traditional Chinese deity said to prevent plagues and ward off evil beings). Musha-e-no-Sato literally means “home to worrier prints.” The shop in Ichikai-cho, Tochigi Prefecture, is specialized in Musha-e artworks and runs through generations to generations from the Meiji Era. With the Boy’s Day several weeks away, its third generation owner and artisan of the studio, … Continue reading

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【News】 Students in Aomori fight against culling of abandoned pets by using their bones as manure to grow flowers (March 4, 2015)

Hiroko Obara Students of Aomori Prefectural Sambongi Agriculture High School in Towada, Aomori Prefecture, are working on a project to use powdered bones of culled pets as manure to grow flowers. The students have grown some 1,500 pots of flowers in three years under the “flowers of life” project, aimed at conveying the preciousness of life and life cycle. The project was started in 2012 by the pet research laboratory of the school’s zoological science division. Students of the laboratory, who visited the prefecture’s animal shelter in the city of Aomori during a field trip, were told that more than 2,000 pet dogs and cats abandoned by their owners are … Continue reading

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【News】 Hokkaido University student’s trip from Hokkaido to Okinawa with two Dosanko horses to end (March 1, 2015)

Tetsuya Onda A 24-year-old undergraduate student in his sixth year in Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Hokkaido University, is now in the course of a long journey through Japan, surprisingly walking all the way from Hokkaido to Okinawa on foot with two Dosanko horses. The student, Kohei Yamakawa, says he wants more people to know that there are some extant Japanese indigenous horse breeds including some critically endangered. Kohei and his two Dosanko horses, native to Hokkaido, left Sapporo, Hokkaido, in August 2014 and now they are almost there at goal, the Yonaguni Island of Okinawa. Late February, Kohei and his mates, Yuki and Mitchy, were walking up the hill in … Continue reading

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