There are a few memorial theme parks for the Warring States periods in Japan. I visited one of the parks – Ise-Azuchi Momoyama Cultural Village – which has since changed its name to Tomoiki-no-Kuni, Ise Ninja Kingdom, in the winter of 2008. In this park, all of the staff wore old-style Japanese kimono and welcomed us with a very high price: 7500 yen...
I couldn’t believe that there were residents of this Japanese-style castle in Yasugi, Shimane. Additionally, they built this real castle themselves with the exception of mounting its roofs. I found this unique building on a TV show and wanted to visit there. Then, I went to Yasugi to look around its traditional exterior in the spring of 2009. I drove my RX...
I found a brochure for the museum when I visited a sake brewery on my trip to Hida-Takayama in the spring of 2001. It was the Hikaru Memorial Hall, which was the former name of the museum, and the pamphlet showed me that they exhibited their research results of Geology and Archeology in the hall. I was so interested in this place and went to the museum soon after...
One man tried to move a big stone using heavy machinery for land preparation in 2004 in Aso, Kumamoto. When he began to break the stone, the excavator suddenly bit the dust. He repaired it and tried again, but the machine didn’t work twice in front of the stone. He couldn’t find the reason why the machine didn’t work well and finished his...
I was in Nagoya because I had to attend a one-day meeting in the Spring of 2021. Nagoya is a big city and there are so many sightseeing spots. I hadn’t enough time to visit several viewpoints, so I decided to go to a bizarre temple: Toganji Temple. There is the Nagoya Daibutsu in the temple, which was colored dark green on his whole body. It is a very rare...
There are so many temples in Kyoto, but this Otagi Nenbutsu-ji Temple has something different because of its stone carving collection in their garden. Usually, stone statues of rakan, which means disciple of Buddha, are made by professional craftsmen; however, most of the one thousand stone sculptures there were carved by amateurs. That is the reason why there are so...
Ivory was widely used to make carvings because of its hardness and whiteness. Now, the ivory trade is limited all over the world in consideration of animal preservation and protection. However, until two decades ago, there were so many ivory markets everywhere. In particular, old China had produced enormous ivory carvings and Japan imported...
The most famous Japanese folk tale is Taketori-monogatari known as “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”. The story about Princess Kaguya, who was born from a bamboo stalk, takes place somewhere in ancient Kyoto once upon a time. A bamboo craftsman, who lived in Kyoto, built a private palace, which was made from bamboo. He was Mr. Kiyosuke Nagano and...
Momotaro is one of the most famous Japanese folk tales. All Japanese know the story of a very tiny boy, who was born from a peach, and who beat the evil demons and took the treasures back. In this story, he got three servants to fight the demons: a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant. Of course, they were very active during the combat against the demons...
Monkeys are basically tropical animals, but the Nihon-zaru is an exception. It lives as far as Aomori Prefecture. However, there are a few monkeys in Hokkaido that like to enjoy the benefits of the hot spring in Yunokawa, Hakodate. We can see the Nihon-zarus enjoying the onsen in the Hakodate Tropical Botanical Garden. I went there in January...