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One thing that I appreciate being a Japanese is that this country gives me a lot of chances to appreciate the four distinguished seasonal views.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating the famous idea of "Japan is one of few countries in the world with four season".

I fully understand that is quite a huge myth Japanese people commonly share.
As a common sense, Japan is not the only country with four season.

Anyways, but this country still looks pretty in every different season and I am truly thankful with it.

Above three photos are from Nikko, which I took in this winter.
All those trees and mountain are covered with pretty white and creates nice atmosphere.

The middle ocean one is from Izu peninsula I visited this spring.
The blue color of the water is such a magnificent view.
Personally I was surprised to see there exists such a gorgeous blue water in the eastern part of Japan.

The bottom one is apparently a picture of Itsukushima Shrine from Miyajima, Hiroshima.
This place is also widely known after the NHK Taiga drama aired the stories of Heishi, founder of the place.

What I would like you to see is the top one and the bottom one.

These photos are about nature but they include some man-made artifacts.
And what I want to emphasize is that they are made to create cohesiveness with nature.
Those human-made objects don't particularly stand out of it. I think they make a good harmony into the nature.

Now I'm not a expert in Japanese cultural studies. But what I know is that the Japanese culture emphasizes the importance of harmony in the nature (often described as "shizen tono chowa").
I think that is one way of the famous concept of wa.

For the old Japanese people, nature was not an object to subdue. It was where you belong to and humans are nothing but a part of it.

Although it is unknown if such idea still exists today, the idea itself is starting to be recognized again since the 3.11 earthquake where we all felt powerless against mother nature.

That's all I can share about the concept of nature in the Japanese culture.




]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11511512626.html Sun, 14 Apr 2013 23:05:27 +0900

(the guy in the picture is me)

In the picture, there you see the 1/1 size statue of Gundam.
For those who don't know about Gundam, it is a military robot with the cockpit inside the body (although they don't have one in this statue) and it is from one of the most famous anime series in the history of Japanese anime.
I believe there are very few people in Japan who don't know anything about Gundam.

In a way, it is the origin and the symbol of all the Japanese popular culture that is continuing up until now.

The reason they made a 1/1 statue of Gundam at Odaiba goes back to 2009.
There was a project called "Green Tokyo Gundam Project" that was taken place from July 11 to August 31, 2009.

Its purpose was to promote the urban tree plantation in Tokyo, which is practiced with the cooperation of local government, citizens, and business industries.

Eventually they chose Gundam as a symbol of "the rebirth of Tokyo as a green area".
I don't know how this (practically) weapon of mass destruction is associated with the rebirth of life. But that is how the statue of Gundam was created and I'm sure a lot of Gundamanias (people obsessed with Gundam or even worship it as a religious deity) appreciated and still appreciating this work of art.

I think this is one of those things people recently call "only in Japan" in some part of the Internet.
And I think that is quite a characteristic of Japanese culture that the popular culture such as anime occupies relatively a large part of the Japanese society (I said "relatively", not the Japanese society in general).

I think (though I may be wrong) so far Japan is the only country in the world that set up the statue of a character that comes from anime as the public property.
That is something I barely hear from foreign countries (I'm not advocating the "uniqueness of Japanese culture" here).

]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11511272181.html Sun, 14 Apr 2013 17:09:50 +0900


(above bills are provided by my friends)

2000 yen note is first issued in 2000 to commemorate the year 2000 and Okinawa Summit (26th G8 Summit). It was planned by Keizo Obuchi and completed by then Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

The bill is known to have 5 of the advanced technologies to prevent counterfeiter.
It depicts Shureimon, one of the symbols of Okinawa to emphasize the importance of Okinawa for Japanese politics.

Prime Minster Mori was expecting this bill to spread out in the whole Japan but unfortunately his vision never came true.

One of reasons involves most of the ATMs and vending machines do not accept the 2000 yen bills and therefore people have few chances to receive them.

Also, there is a theory that because of the cultural factor, which in Japan emphasize the importance of odd numbers (on the contrary to western societies in general where they often use even numbers as in $20, 20 ponds, etc)

The only place this bill is widely used is Okinawa, where the local government did the campaign to spread out 2000 yens.


There is also an interesting rumor about the bill that it is created to decimate the political message from Japanese government to China, where they claim the right to own the island of Okinawa.
It therefore has an image of Shureimon to emphasize the Japanese ownership of Okinawa against China.

I don't know how much that is true but 2011 news report says LDP tried new campaign to encourage the use of 2000 yen in Okinawa to appeal LDP's emphasis and care for the Okinawa region.

At least it sounds like true that bills reflect the nation's politics very often. ]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11511259809.html Sun, 14 Apr 2013 17:07:56 +0900





If you live in Tokyo or any part of major city in Japan, nighttime city view is definitely one decent activity you should appreciate.

Within the Tokyo bay area, there are more than 25 night time scenery (which we call yakei) spots and I personally visited most of them myself.
Yakei kansho (watching nighttime scenery) has become widely practiced since the industrialization of the whole country.

I heard that the history of yakei kansho originally started after the WW2 when American culture was introduced in Japan, including Christmas.

The Christmas illumination became an important tradition in postwar (especially in the city area I think) and that was how people started to recognize the nighttime city view for fun.

It is especially more promoted after the invention of LED and now the whole cities became more decorative.

Now growing up to the largest mega-city in the world, Tokyo itself has a series of illumination events and yakei spots known by the tourists.

Although I don't know much about the foreign cultures, Japan has a culture that they practice activities at nighttime such as Tsukimi (moon watching) and yomatsuri (night festival).

There is a movement to make use of yakei for business as well.
Also, there is a newly created qualification called "yakei kantei-shi" (nighttime view appraiser)

This gives you enough idea about how yakei is becoming more and more important tourist attraction of this country.
]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11511244772.html Sun, 14 Apr 2013 16:40:31 +0900



Backstreets in Tokyo, or Japan in general, is a nice topic to talk about this country in my opinion.

Tokyo is apparently a highly industrialized city and it's scenery has been changing so much since decades ago.

But the backstreets are one of few places where you can observe the city's old scenery and cultures. It is where time is barely passing.

In the above pictures, you can see some buildings that appear to be more than 40~50 years old, like the the blue one on above right and the middle in the bottom picture.

They create some sort of old atmosphere and sometimes people above 50 (including my father) seem to be very sensitive wit this kind of scenery. The more the city becomes modernized, the more the atmosphere stands out.

It is probably because of such characteristics, there are people who are attracted with Tokyo's backstreets. They often take photos and those are you can find in the Internet quite a lot.
Some of the albums are even in the bookstores.

Backstreets can be a good subject of anthropology actually.
They are often filled with decoration of whom they live in the buildings. Also those decorations are often made to be cohesive with the neighboring houses and decorations.

In a way, that shows the part of Japanese culture, which emphasizes the cohesiveness with what is surrounding your space.




]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11475979075.html Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:32:44 +0900



Tokyo is known as the lasrgest mega-city in the world.
It is a city with millions of population that is still increasing.
It is one of the centers in the global economy and unique cultures.

That fact itself makes this city an exception from the rest of the worlds big cities.
But another factor that I think makes Tokyo so much different is that the city, its majority of the areas, are created without an organized urban-development plannings.

If you look at the city such as London, Paris (or simply majority of the European cities), Washington DC and New York, you can tell that the first planners of those cities had a clear vision about what the cities would and should look like in the future.

And their strict regulation with the use of colors, materials, distribtution of spaces are still in practice.

I know Europeans are very careful about the visual image of their cities and therefore their neighborhoods are always kept as beautiful scenery (they often have problems with cleanliness but I'm not going to touch on it for this entry).

But in Tokyo, that is not a case.

Historically Japanese don't have a sense of urban development and therefore most of the buildings are in disorder. Except for some new cities such as Yokohama Minato Mirai and Sinjuku Fukutoshin, everything is disconnected.

There was actually a plan to develop Tokyo with urban development plan right after the WW2, when the whole city had to start everything out from ashes.
But the plan was abandoned by huge critisism by local farmers, which I think is a pity.

But because of no planning, I think Tokyo has a very unique atmosphere of urban chaos and this itself has one way of attractiveness.

So, I like Tokyo this way.
]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11475977776.html Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:28:32 +0900






Temples and shrines (although in this entry there is no photo of Shinto shrines) to me sort of explains the important aspect of the Japanese culture, the simplicity.

There is a word which we say "質実剛健" (shitsu jitsu gou ken) and it basically means the emphasis on inner strength and dignity without noticeable surface decoration.

This is what explains most of the key features in the Japanese culture. If you live in this society, you can see it shows in every aspect of daily life including the life and working environment of the salarymen, which I personally think it's going too much.

I heard a story of the European missionary who visited Japan right after China. His first impression of Japanese culture was how Japanese don't put emphasis on the surface look yet values what is beneath it, in comparison to then Chinese culture (in his own impression) that stresses the gloriousness and large-scale on the first look.

Japanese temples and most of the shrines (some exceptions like Nikko Toshogu) plus castles are mostly organized with simple cold colors like black, brown, white, and sometimes with light green (probably because it matches with the surrounding nature).

And the structure of the building are not made to surprise people with its scale (except for the statues of Buddha that is to be praised and worshiped)

Simplicity has always been a main theme of the Japanese art.

Being a Japanese myself, I prefer that way. I really love something that looks simple yet has some sort of significance and strength within.



]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11475973042.html Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:17:11 +0900







Kasenjiki (the edge of rivers or simply riverside) has a lot of meanings for the life of Japanese people.

If you are an anime fan, I think you might have noticed that through some stories where a lot of important events take place at the riverside.

Appearently, many important events and activities are taken place at Kasenjiki in Japan. That includes, for example, sports (there is a baseball play taking place in the Tamagawa riverside), running by citizens or highschool kids, firework festivals (often referred to as kasenjiki hanabi taikai), and also romance and troubles occur quite often.

I myself actually find my seishun (juvenile or adlescence, bascically my early youth) with the riverside of Tsurumi-gawa in Yokohama and Tama-gawa in Kawasaki's side.

I am not an expert with anthropology. So, I can't give you any idea exactly about "why" and all I can tell is that kasenjiki always come to as important place for the Japanese memory of their life.

But if you look at the Japanese poets and classcial music, river and more importantly "water" is always an important theme (like they often put the phrase "ogawa no seseragi") and historically Japanese significantly depended their life on rivers compared to people like Americans during the colonial days, where their major crop was corn.

Maybe because of this reason, people have a strong emotional tie with wherever the water flows, including myself.
]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11475970136.html Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:15:33 +0900



I'm at Kawasaki and this is right by the JR Kawasaki station.
When you get out of the east exit, there you see a lot of newly built apartments.

This whole area used to be a large factory and it was not the safest neighborhood in Kawasaki.
The city conducted the new plan to redevelop the entire area into a residential area as a part of Kawasaki remodeling plan.

Here's the important part. The park in the picture, where exactly is this built on?






It's on the bridge.




Or specifically, it's on the pedestrians deck.
In Tokyo, they have a whole a lot of pedestrians decks across the road so the pedestrians don't have to wait at the traffic light.

And this deck is built in the same concept.


As you may know, Japan and especially the Kanto district has a problem with shortage of space and the efficient usage of the limited space is one of the important tasks for the Japanese to improve the life standard quality.

This place that was built in the early 2000s is one way of solution to that.

There is actually a plan that creates the whole city inside of the building that is called Mega-city.

It is a building that has more than 10 stories and each layer has its own neighborhood.

I think this maybe the beginning of new Tokyo.








Above picture is how the bridge begins and the below one tells you how the buildings are connected wit each other.







]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11475774756.html Fri, 22 Feb 2013 02:45:26 +0900






This topic is related with my other blog entry about the Japanese use of space.

As we all know, Japan has a problem of limited space since long ago, especially here in Tokyo.
And one of the solutions for this problem is to create more spaces wherever possible.

Tokyo and Yokohama, along with Kobe and Osaka are very nice examples to observe how that is practiced.

Japan has developed all these watrerfront cities such as Odaiba, Tsukishima, Toyosu, and Yokohama Minato-Mirai 21 and some of them are still expanding. And its history traces back to what we know as Gunkan-jima.

There is however a problem regarding with the safety. For example, there is a discussin that the places like Odaiba and Toyosu are actually vulnerable to the massive earthquake and they may collapse for one hit.

Since the 3.11 earthquake, this problem became an issue to be more discussed when the water came up the ground at Tokyo Disneyland where it is also known as Umetatechi.

Still, this country has been creating the advanced technology of man-made islands and I recently saw the news that there is a project for creating the megafloat city in the pacific ocean where they found the natural resources in the water.

It might be the beginning of the 21st century type of new clonial era.
]]> https://ameblo.jp/v512toshi/entry-11475766217.html Fri, 22 Feb 2013 02:06:34 +0900