Japan Navigator

The ultimate armchair traveler: The Travels of Marco Polo being mapped out with Google Maps and Google Images. Cool.

I discovered a Misumi Kenji version of Yotsuya Kaidan among my old tapes and, wanting to find out how it compares to other Yotsuya Kaidan films, I found this site “Weird Wild Realm Film Reviews” where several [...]

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The town of Obama lies in Fukui Prefecture and has shrewdly utilized the fact that it shares its name with one of the two U.S. presidential candidates of 2008. As I wrote in another post, it is a beautiful place with lots of Buddhist treasures in its many temples.
Now, surprisingly, Fukui has been placed again [...]

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A record number of climbers scaled Japan’s Mount Fuji during the summer season, according to The Associated Press. During this year’s climbing season (July & August) 247,066 people scaled the 3,776-meter high sacred peak.
Death and injuries also rose – four climbers breathed their last in the mountain’s purified air.
Surprisingly, many people seem to think of [...]

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According to Asahi.com, Shanghai surpassed New York as the overseas city with the largest number of long-term (> 3 months) Japanese residents.

Shanghai: 47,731 long-term Japanese residents
New York: 40,068 long-term Japanese residents

But when we look at permanent residents, Los Angeles is no. 1: 61,336, followed by New York (51,705) and then Shanghai (47,794).
On a country-by-country basis, [...]

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According to Monsters & Critics, a priest in Niigata accidentily set fire to his temple when trying to smoke out a hornet’s nest with a torch. The prickly insects were hiding on top of a cupboard, but when the priest tried to torch them (not very Buddhist, is it?) they vehemently attacked him so that [...]

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Although the Rashomon Gate does not exist anymore, thanks to the story by Akutagawa Ryunosuke and the film by Kurosawa Akira, it has always been a huge looming presence in my mind…
This monumental gate was erected at the southern entrance to Kyoto, then called Heiankyo, when the capital city was founded in 794. From the [...]

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In Japan, almost every day of the month has been claimed by some institution or other. After Disaster Prevention Day on September 1, now on September 2 we have something quite different: Lottery day! (Takarakuji no Hi). Why? Well, apparently, non-winning tickets from the previous year get a second chance today.
I have to confess that [...]

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September 1 is the day that in 1923 the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, claiming more than 142,000 victims – many due to the terrible firestorms. On top of that, the most destructive typhoon on record, the Isewan Typhoon, hit coastal regions in Central Japan on September 26, 1959, killing over 6,000. On average, three to [...]

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