Japan Navigator

A lost sketchbook / travel diary by ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige has recently surfaced in the United States, as the Daily Yomiuri Online reports. Called Koshu Nikki Shaseicho (“Diary and Sketches of Koshu”), it is only one of two sketchbooks in existence by Hiroshige, so it is an important find. The sketchbook dates from November 1841 [...]

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In Europe you will not easily find any imposing skylines (but we have those cosy red-tiled roofs), while in Asia skyscrapers are shooting up one after another. Italian Luigi Diserio has made a list of his 15 favorite skylines and no wonder that 6 of the 10 best ones can be found in Asia.
No. 1 [...]

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For the French author Marcel Proust fragrances called up the strongest memories, also of forgotten things from a long past childhood. An accidental whiff of roses and you are a small child again, riding your bicycle in the old garden; the penetrating smell of charcoal fires and I am walking in the alleys of Kyoto, [...]

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We are right in the middle of the climbing season of Mt Fuji, so every night you will find a long line of people pulling themselves strenuously up the huge volcano. But there is also other news about the Fuji.
UPI has reported that scientists are getting worried that the volcano, which has been quiet since [...]

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leaving the Temple Gate
there is Japan!
songs of teapickers
sanmon wo dereba | Nippon zo! | chatsumi uta
By Kikushani (1753-1826)
Manpukuji Temple in Uji, Kyoto, belongs to a Chinese Zen school that was brought to Japan by Ingen, who fled China for the Manchu invaders in the mid-17th c. The Obaku-sect temple was a true Chinese cultural enclave [...]

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In Takagamine, in the quiet northern part of Kyoto, stands Koetsuji, famous for a fence of bamboo designed by the artist Hon’ami Koetsu. It is more an explosion of green than a temple, particularly when we visit in the hottest and wettest month of the year, August. After a shower, the smell of earth and [...]

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Paradise Mountain lies here on earth, close to Hon-Nagashino on the Iida line out of Toyohashi in Aichi Prefecture. Horai-zan, it is called, and Horai is the Land of Bliss of the Chinese Taoist tradition. In its original conception, it was conceived as a mountainous island in the wide ocean, in Japan it was applied [...]

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“100 yen shops” were a typical phenomenon of the long economic crisis in Japan. In the nineties, they mushroomed all over the country, and even reared their heads in upperscale shopping districts.
You now find them everywhere in Japan. Their stock consists of a variety of items from clothing to stationery, housewares to food, with each [...]

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Kanazawa, the historical town in Ishikawa prefecture, boasts two superb gardens. One is famous and public, the other private and much less well-known. One is bright and open, the other dark and secluded. The first one is the famous Kenrokuen, one of Japan’s daimyo gardens; lesser-known Gyokusenen is the other one. A visit to both [...]

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The Bon festival or “Obon” has an interesting history. Folk-Buddhist in origin, it came from China where Buddhism was heavily colored by ancestor worship and Confucianism before it marched on to Japan. The festival finds its religious justification in the Ullambana Sutra (probably not an original Indian sutra but written in China). This popular sutra [...]

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