If you can get to Kyoto in April, you should. The cherry trees bloom in mid-March and usually reach their peak in early April. But even if you miss Sakura season, you really need to see this place. The former Japanese capital is filled with ancient temples and shrines. This is also the place to go to learn how to make sushi.
The moment my feet touched the ground in Tsuyoshi Sekihara’s village of Nakanomata, I was struck by the proportionality of the place. Very quickly, I understood his passion for right-sized communities. You can walk the circumference of the village within an hour. Wooden farmhouses, hundreds of years old, cluster beneath the canopy of trees along the river that runs from the mountains to the Sea of Japan.
A steady stream of mourners visited the scene of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's assassination in the western city of Nara on Saturday as a motorcade carrying the late leader's body arrived in the capital, Tokyo. Japan's longest-serving modern leader was shot while making a campaign speech on Friday morning by a 41-year-old man, in a deed decried by the political establishment as an attack on democracy itself.
The celebrity-favorite and Instagram-famous teamLab Planets Tokyo has become the world’s most popular single-artist destination, drawing in more than 2 million visitors in its first year. The sprawling interactive digital artwork space allows guests to virtually walk through water and immerse themselves in an enhanced world that responds to live movement. Visitors enter the museum barefoot and become completely immersed with other visitors in the vast, enthralling spaces. The artwork is manipulated in real time by a computer program so previous visual states can never be replicated and will never reoccur -- each visitor’s experience is completely unique.
Japanese interest in beauty is focused on facial features, according to a survey by the Japan Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery that shows 90 percent of about 237,000 common cosmetic surgeries were performed on the face in 2017. The number contrasts sharply with global figures, which show that only about 40 percent of cosmetic surgeries are performed on the face around the world. The majority of cosmetic surgeries globally are done to improve the shape of the body, including breast enlargement and fat removal.
Nestled next to the expansive, multi-floor exhibit, however, is the Japanese wing housing a long-term show dedicated to the process by which the Met was able to collect art and artifacts from Japan since the 19th century. Being acquainted with the Japanese wing of the museum might instill some disappointment as there are not a whole lot of new additions to see or information to know – however, if you go without the expectation of seeing a new take on their collection, you can have a pleasurable and familiar experience while engaging with a bit of back story.
All eyes are on President Barack Obama’s itinerary for his planned trip to Asia in April as Korea and Japan are now embroiled in a fierce historical and territorial battle of nerves.Obama is widely expected to visit Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines and Malaysia as well as Japan. Of interest is whether or not his stops will include Seoul and how long he will stay in Tokyo.
Like millions of other Americans, Ted, who also found a new career working in the high-tech end of the film industry, fled America and reinvented himself overseas. And nowhere is the expat invasion more evident than in East and Southeast Asia. In Hong Kong alone the number of American expats is estimated to be 60,000 in 2009, though many say that number is much higher.That is almost the number of expats living in mainland China, which is somewhere around 72,000, according to the Chinese census.
Credit Emperor for putting big questions front and center for the audience to ponder: What is the United States, in the role of victor, supposed to do as a nation-builder? Benevolence? Revenge? Step away and let the power vacuum be filled by something unknown (in 1945 Japan, this is Stalin and communism). With the United States’ role in the change of leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan, these questions still haunt the world’s foremost democracy. The movie succeeds in demonstrating there are no easy answers.
In curating this lineup, I selected four films that all share one specific point of commonality: flawed people trying to make it through their day despite the odds being stacked against them. Some stories are more successful than others, yet these four films demonstrate a unique perspective in their search to make sense of our current American lifestyles.
Godfrey was returning to the area at the time to find inspiration for a book about the lives of the girls who live in a group home since they have nowhere else to go. There, she meets Josephine Bell, the de facto leader of the girls. Godfrey quickly learns of their harsh lifestyle and the fact that the city sees them as disposable.
