My Kyoto Guidebook says:
Flowers bloom throughout the year at Heian Shrine’s beautiful gardens, home of the Jidai Matsuri Festival.
Heian Jingu was built in 1895 to mark the 1,100th anniversary of the founding on Kyoto. It is dedicated to the first, Kammu, and last, Komei, emperors to reign in Kyoto. Heian Jingu is most noted for [...]
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Posted in Events, Festivals, History, Traditional Culture, Travel, tagged hanami, japan, plum blossoms, ume, ume matsuri, 梅祭り on February 26, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Finally! Spring is here! Time to roll out the Hanami mats and sit under the beautiful blossoms…
In the Nara Period (710 - 794), Japanese people viewed Ume (梅, Japanese Plum) Blossoms, as they were the first blossoms that signaled the coming of Spring. Around the Heian Period, however, Sakura viewing parties became more popular among [...]
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Posted in History, Modern Culture, News, People, tagged japan, beauty, small face, long legs, huge eyes, fashion, boya, pretty men on February 5, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Small face, long legs, and a tiny, tiny waist. This is how most Japanese women would like to look and how Japanese men want women to look. It’s everywhere from their anime to their ads for beauty products, and oh yeah, did I forget to mention the dyed hair and the huge eyes? There’s [...]
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Posted in Books, Daily Life, History, Modern Culture, Travel, tagged edo period, gaijin novel, japan, Travel, walking on January 27, 2008 | No Comments »
One fact I have never been able to confirm about Japanese history, particularly about the Edo Period, was the prohibition of the use of wheels. In the book Gaijin, James Clavell writes about policies enacted by either Toyotomi Hideyoshi or Tokugawa Ieyasu. Included in the ban of guns and gunpowder, was a ban on people [...]
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Posted in Daily Life, History, Modern Culture, Traditional Culture, tagged accupressure, chiropractic, doctors, hokkairo, japan, medical services, medicine, reflexology, shiatsu on January 22, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Who doesn’t have a story about visiting a doctor in Japan and feeling a little bit more worried than when you scheduled an appointment? What with all those blue tablets for the swelling to go down to the pink capsules that counteract the side effects of the orange pill, and the attendant who didn’t wear [...]
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I was reading this Japan Times article. It reminded me of quizzes I gave to my Japanese students. They were big hits. Later on, I’d quiz my Japanese friends and they’d all call me kuwashii (詳しい, used to describe a person who is knowledgeable about something/s). Although this observation is far from accurate, we all [...]
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When Japan closed itself to the world, they also sort of banned locals from wandering around the country. Most Japanese were made to carry some sort of identification papers with them at all times. If they weren’t able to present these to samurai guards, they’d be in real trouble. There was even a restriction on [...]
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