NEWS OF TRAVEL JAPAN

In Japan all the freshmen of school (kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, high school, college and university) and companies begin their new social lives from April. Especially in urban cities in April, there are many newly recruited working adults, who are adopted all at once in the previous year by many corporations and begin their employee lives. For foreigners this social custom hardly seems to be seen in their home counties, but it is easy to see it in urban cities because they wear typical black suits usually, and they look unconfident with young bodies due to the unfamiliar environment of their workplaces. They have worries larger than hope in their minds. Their starting time is the same as cherry blossom blooming, but their appearance wearing new suits is humble compared with cherry blossom trees. This is the typical scene in urban cities in early April. Such newly recruited working adults minds become normal in late April and their vigorous young looks get to...

One characteristic of Japanese cuisine is the harmonic beauty composed by seasonal foods which are arranged clearly and cooked delicately, colorful Japanese Chinese dishes which provide a stage for the foods and black Japanese lacquer boxes. Clearly arranged and delicately cooked? Yes, and sharply. A cut surface of fresh fish or a simmered green vegetable by cutting it into bite sized pieces. These which are made by a Japanese kitchen knife, a hocho, can add well-prepared skills to foods. Hocho is indispensable to Japanese cuisine. Surely the cutting ability is the core of hocho. To cut a hard big fresh fish like a tuna easily, to make a smooth cut surface of “sashimi” or to make extremely thin vegetable strings from a Japanese radish, these are gripping of abilities of the hocho. Moreover, it is not known much to foreign people that a sharply cut food by hocho are more delicious taste. For example, squid is able to be caught in all the seas in Japan, fresh squid is delicious w...

If you eat bread as your main carbohydrate through every meal, you can travel in Japan without concern. All the hotels in which you will stay provide bread for breakfast unless you stay in a genuine Japanese inn. The average taste of those type of bread is generally good, soft, slightly moist, and kind of sweet but not too sweet. Those type of bread might be kind of different from the taste of that of your home country’s bread but you will be able to eat them without worry. You can catch many gourmet reports about ramen, sushi, yakiniku or others in Japan. Well, the main carbohydrate for Japanese people are rice, noodles and bread. Many Japanese people who live in this gastronomical country take care of the quality of the taste of rice and noodles, and they broadcast many reports about rice and noodles to foreigners. On the other hand there aren’t any reports about bread for foreign travelers because nobody in Japan recognizes that bread made in Japan has any value for foreigners. Ho...

There are many traditional accomplishments like tea ceremony in Japan. Monko is one of them, but it is not popular for Japanese people. For the first time my wife and I participated in Monko, listening to incense, at a workshop in Kyoto. Despite of “listening to” ,the action of Monko is to smell fragrance of incense woods. Before Monko trials the owner of the workshop talked simply to twenty participants including us about incense woods. The workshop is in the traditional fragrance shop since the Edo period. The owner is the descendant of the originator, he explained about incense woods and the history of Monko. Incense woods have three categories, kyara, aloeswood and sandalwood. Kyara is precious aloeswood, both of kyara and aloeswood are made from resin. These are made over several centuries accumulation of resin and long fermentation underground. These are found in the south-east Asian countries, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, India and neighboring countries, but recently these a...

The cherry blossom season has come! It’s about two weeks earlier than every year. Recently many foreigners come to Japan in order to see cherry blossom trees and they will schedule it according to the time of blossoms, unfortunately, many visitors might fail to see cherry blossom trees this year. If you plan to come to Japan for cherry blossom sightseeing, you should reschedule your itinerary earlier. Meanwhile if you have enough days in your journey, it is no problem. The season for cherry blossoms in a region is about ten days. However the islands of Japan is so long from southern Okinawa prefecture to northern Hokkaido prefecture that the season of cherry blossoms in Japan has about a two months span. So even if you fail to see cherry blossoms in a city like Osaka City you can recover it in a more northern region. To go to a northern destination in order to chase cherry blossoms is a cool and stylish behavior for many Japanese people, then you will be welcomed by the people of th...

Culture in a country is the result made by the specific customs based on the thoughts of the people, if it is true, to try to look out for the specific custom of a country where you visit is a joyful challenge during your traveling time. When I visited foreign countries I experienced the different customs from Japan and I was happy to know it. Many anthropologists say that Japanese culture is especially different from cultures of other countries. Then foreigners visiting Japan will feel pleasure by finding out the different customs from their countries. Warikan is the one specific Japanese custom. Warikan is to split the bill among members who ate dishes and drank in restaurants and it is generally a popular custom in Japan. I have a foreign friend who has been in Japan from Australia and I sometimes have drinking parties with him. He knows Japanese customs but perhaps his true sense depends on western customs. At paying the bill when I suggested “sloping warikan” to him as a mat...

The number of foreign travelers who visit the countryside in Japan are increasing year after year. Why do they go there? What do they find there? Many Japanese people, who live in urban cities and in the countryside as well, don’t know the reason why foreigners visit the countryside where there is no interest for Japanese. Since one hundred and fifty years ago Japan has pursued the western industrial society and system. Moreover Japanese people have not turned their faces to the countryside. For many Japanese people, the countryside in Japan is not a living place but a only heartfelt hometown which they think far from the countryside.  One of the reasons why foreign travelers visit the countryside in Japan might be that the countryside close to nature is beautiful and pleasant. One hundred and fifty years ago many foreigners visited the countryside in Japan, many of them said in their travel diaries that the countryside in Japan was beautiful like painting pictures. Nowadays the ...