Category Archives: Photos

【News】 Sushi rolls become edible artworks (Jan. 13, 2015)

Kotaro Yamada A face of sumo wrestlers appears on every cut of the makizushi (sushi rolls). For Takayo Kiyota, a makizushi artist, a sushi roll is an artistic medium to embed original patterns into the rice. She lays out rice, seaweed, and regular sushi roll ingredients such as gourd so that the cross section will show motifs when the roll is cut. She also uses sesame seeds, greens, and red perillas to add colors to rice for some of her artworks. It takes at least one hour to make a simple one, while she can spend a whole day to make a detailed piece. Kiyota started to work with the … Continue reading

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【News】 Big-Eyed Shinto Guardian to Protect Villagers (Jan. 11, 2015)

  Kotaro Yamada – Ashinoshiri Dosojin  (Nagano Prefecture)  – Ashinoshiri villagers in Ooka district of Nagano-shi, Nagano Prefecture, have a huge grim-looking guardian that sits at the border of the village. It’s an enormous mask of Dosojin, a Shinto guardian for the community made of bundles of straws and mounted on a stone marker. The face with big eyebrows and mustache is intimidating but somewhat charming and striking. Every year on January 7, local villagers replace it with a new one and hold Ashinoshiri Dosojin Festival to pray for good health and good harvest over the new year. “Why don’t we make the mouth a bit bigger?” “This is good. … Continue reading

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【News】 Let them glow and paint whole town in orange (Dec. 28, 2014)

  Tetsuya Onda – Mandarin Orange Peel Ornaments (Ehime Prefecture) – Displaying fir trees decorated with orange round ornaments made of mandarin peels. This is becoming a new winter attraction in Ehime Prefecture, a famous producer of mandarin oranges. It was started nine years ago by a private non-profitable organization set up by a group of young guys living in the prefecture. The NGO, Matsuyama Matsuri Ikemen-ren (Team Hot Guys for Matsuyama Festival), which helps organizing the Matsuyama Festival, thought that this will help expanding sales of Matsuyama mandarin oranges. The movement has grown gradually to involve local mandarin farmers and children. The recipe for creating the gorgeous round ornaments is … Continue reading

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【News】 Gourmet lunch for children! (Dec. 14, 2014)

Tetsuya Onda – 9th All Japan School Lunch Championship – Twelve couples of school lunch professionals show superb skills The final match to determine the best school lunch of the year was held at Kagawa Nutrition University in Toshima-ku, Tokyo, and the top 12 finalists, either school lunch centers or school dieticians for elementary and junior high schools, did their best to demonstrate their original menus all rich in local ingredients. The 9th All Japan School Lunch Championship was organized by a non-profit organization, Research and Institute for 21st Century, with an aim to support dietary education for Children. The 12 local champion teams came from Aomori Prefecture in the … Continue reading

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【Watch】 Secretive act by Mr. Froman revealed! (Dec. 12, 2014)

  Senior Staff Writer, Masaru Yamada – Washington, D.C. Ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks, or TPP talks, have been strongly criticized for its secretive style of negotiations. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman Thursday, Dec. 11 showed his skill how to secretly remove an anti-free-trade slogan from his coffee cup. Labor Unions and civic groups organized “an unconventional protest” outside the USTR building in Washington DC early morning passing out free coffee and the coffee cup sleeves saying “Wake up! Stop Fast Track.” Although the original purpose was to deliver coffee to participants of the chief negotiators’ meeting held here in Washington DC until Friday Dec.12, they got a much bigger … Continue reading

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