Streets in Japan
I like walking lively shopping streets in Japan. Those streets look like toy boxes. Unexpected encounters wait for us. In October, I had a chance to walk on this kind of street in early morning. Then I noticed some points which many people do not pay attention to.
Cheerful Music and Mindful Landscape
If you are in Kyoto in early July, you hear some lively music every evening at different parts of the town. Neighborhood musicians are practicing traditional instrumental music, Ohayashi, to be ready for their performance on the top of parading floats (Yamaboko) . I was there ten years ago strolling and listening to the tunes, feeling comfortable and calm. […]
Kamo River – Water to divide life and death
In Japan, people think that water sometimes becomes a border to divide two different worlds. Kamo River, which runs through Kyoto City, also used to be thought as the border to separate the world for the living from that for the dead. There was a crematory in the area called Toribeno. This area is located at […]
Map from 1886 Showing the Original Kyoto Station
This interesting map was published in Kyoto in 1886. I encounterd it in doing a reasearch for my seminar. It is only about 20 years after the Meiji Restration, yet to my surprise, the map carries an image of original Kyoto station. It is an one-story building at the photo’s center that almost looks like a barn. Can you find […]
