· July, 2010

Stories about Japan from July, 2010

Japan: Abandoned Building Clock

  31 July 2010

@MaripoGoda crowd sourced Flickr photos to build Haikyo Tokei, which shows a different photo of broken clocks in abandoned buildings to tell the time every minute. @mazzo shared [ja] his communication with the developer, who acknowledged that the images for 11:02 and 08:15 represent the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and...

Japan: Art on an island

  30 July 2010

Nazra Zahri blogged – with gorgeous photos and a video – about her trip to Teshima, one of the seven islands that's celebrating Setouchi International Art Festival.

Japan: How to Enjoy Fireworks Displays

  27 July 2010

After a video on Cherry Blossom Viewing [en], the team of Legon produced an instructional animated video on How to Enjoy Fireworks Displays (Hanabi) [en] in Japan. Both in English and Japanese, it illustrates the basics of the firework festivals that often light up the summer night sky in Japan.

Japan: Agriculture and Entrepreneurship

  26 July 2010

Barnali and Anirvan (who traveled from the U.S. to Japan by ship!) blog about interesting Agriculture 2.0 projects that they encountered at green drinks Tokyo. “About sixty young people crowded into an event space to hear speakers talk about “Agriculture 2.0,” projects connecting urban dwellers with healthy local food, while...

Japan: Eating unagi eel to battle the heat

  26 July 2010

It's Doyo No Ushi in Japan today – the day to eat grilled eel to bolster your energy for battling the summer heat. TsukuBlog gives a comprehensive explanation of the tradition and A Radiused Corner has some beautiful pictures of the dish.

Japan: Mob collusion soils the sumo ring

  24 July 2010

After the National Police decided to crack down on the connections between crime syndicates and sumo wrestlers, sumo fans question the image of sumo as a sacred sport.

Japan: Rice paddy art

  20 July 2010

Pink Tentacle published several pictures [en] of wonderful examples of rice crop art, “which is created by carefully arranging different colors of rice plants in the field.”

Japan: A short documentary-post on Tuvalu

  18 July 2010

Photographer Ken Umemoto dedicates a post [ja] to Tuvalu [en] and the disastrous effects of human intervention and climate change on the island. The post also includes fascinating “auteur photos”,

Japan: Manga blogging on Mexico

  8 July 2010

Mexico based Ohtoh Ryoko manga-blogs [ja] on her Mexican daily life and the unfamiliar customs of the country. The main character is a little girl with pigtails, who wears a yellow luchador (wrestler) mask.

Japan: Decline of Students Studying in the U.S. and Overseas

  5 July 2010

Despite the increasing number of people studying abroad via study abroad programs, the overall rate of Japanese college students studying abroad seems to be decreasing across the board — even accounting for Japan's declining birthrate. What is the cause of this remarkable decline?

Japan: Hashima Island, the abandoned island

  4 July 2010

Craig Schmeizer at Make A History wrote a post on Hashima Island [en] (also dubbed Warship Island), a small island in the south of Japan that was abandoned in 1974. According to the blogger, it was “a center of a major mining complex owned by Mitsubishi Corporation” until it was...

Japan: The art of cutting paper

  1 July 2010

Japanstyle dedicates a post [en] to kamikiri, one of the traditional crafts that uses paper and that is also a stage performance. Attached to the post a video where popular kamikiri artist Hayashiya Imamaru creates splendid silhouettes with scissors and paper.