Hiroki Arai – Bamboo Lantern Festival (Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa Prefecture) – In Kanagawa Prefecture, community groups are already playing an important role in managing, and conserving bamboo forests while using them as a symbol for enlivening communities, under the leadership of a non-profit organization, NPO Japan Bamboo Fan Club. On October 25, 2014, the NPO held the 11th Bamboo Lantern Festival at Kozukue-joshi Shimin-no-Mori park in Kohoku-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa Prefecture, and turned the park into a stadium of stars. More than 5,000 bamboo lanterns were used to create the fantastic sceneries along the walkways in the bamboo forest of approximately 2,000 square meters. Volunteers lit all the floating candles in … Continue reading →

  Kotaro Yamada For Reijiro Tsukida, 70, woodpile is a work of art. Using firewood for his wood-burning stoves at home, the flower grower creates mosaic. The artwork is built out of konara oak firewood he keeps under the eaves at his home. Each piece of firewood has different colors and tones, and all are in different diameters. He builds motifs making use of all such unique features of each piece of the materials, sometimes placing them in different angles. The patterns he chooses are also varied from famous animated characters to his own family and flowers he grows. Every spring, he goes to the surrounding mountains to cut trees … Continue reading →