Category Archives: Photos

The number of unique Japanese tea shops is increasing. Those include a shop specialized in flavored tea and a café that serves cups of hand-drip Japanese tea. They are contributing to the expansion of the Japanese tea follower base. Ocharaka is a tea shop located in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. A huge shelf of wooden tea boxes with name tags such as “Baked Apple” and “Rose” occupies one wall of the shop. Inside the boxes are 50 kinds of flavored tea leaves produced based on Japanese tea leaves and dried fruits and flower petals. The shop owner is Stephane Danton, a 52-year-old ex-wine sommelier from France. After he came to Japan, he … Continue reading →

A large spherical floral artwork, measuring 2.5 meters in diameter, appeared on April 27 at Shin-Marunouchi Building near JR Tokyo Station to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the opening of the building. The flower ball, titled “Blooming Waltz,” was designed by 40-year-old Danish flower artist Nicolai Bergmann. Bergmann, now a resident of Tokyo, studied at a gardening school in Denmark and moved to Japan, inspired by Japanese cultures such as kimono and traditional handicrafts. While working at a flower shop in Saitama Prefecture, he studied the Japanese art of flower arrangement. After he opened his own flower shop, his distinctive arrangements created by fusing Japanese and European aesthetics attracted a … Continue reading →

Along the bank of Funagawa River in Asahi town, Toyama Prefecture, tulips and cherry blossoms are in full bloom at once, presenting a beautiful harmony of colors with the mountains of the Northern Alps in the background. The tulips are grown by a 56-year-old local bulb grower, Shuji Yamazaki, who successfully manages to make his tulips flower when the 280 cherry trees on the river banks are in full bloom. This year, he planted approximately 600,000 bulbs of tulips in 30 different kinds in his 1.5 hectors field. Shuji and his 74-year-old father began producing tulips in the cherry-blossom season in 2008, expecting that “the tulips added to the already-beautiful … Continue reading →

Tours of eating local specialties on a double-decker bus while enjoying the changing scenery of rural villages are recently proving so popular that sometimes it is difficult to get reservations. The bus comes with a kitchen on the first floor and tables and seats for 25 people on the second floor. The roof will be opened, or covered with a transparent fabric on rainy days, to make it easy for people to see the outside view. A tour which includes visits to a Japanese sake brewery and a strawberry farm in the city of Niigata drives 60 kilometers in three and a half hours. While participants enjoy visiting a brewery … Continue reading →