During Hitsujiyama Park’s Shibazakura Festival in Saitama you can stroll around the huge 1.8-hectare lawn filled with over 400,000 moss phlox of nine different varieties.

This spring, Kesennuma brings you its yearly free music festival! Join us on April 20th for the last Kesennuma Street Live Festival of the Heisei era. This event is run by city volunteers who are all excited to reel in the Reiwa era with music and cheer.

Now that I am teaching in Japan, dodgeball is one of the most popular pass times during recess, and I play dodgeball with my students as often as I can (but only limited to elementary school kids excluding Gr.6 boys). What I didn’t know at first and surprised me was how different the rules are in Japan…What do you mean we are going outside? Why is he standing outside the court?

In the busiest time of the year in Hokkaido, a small town in the center of the prefecture lights up, literally. Over 10,000 paper lanterns fill up the streets in Takikawa, and people from all over the prefecture and Japan visit.

In Osaka, however, there are plenty of activities to do during the winter which are sure to pull you out of your cosy warm bed and into Kansai’s popular prefecture! Here’s a look at 5 things to do in Osaka during the winter!

For travelers interested in anything beyond planet Earth, Kagoshima prefecture’s JAXA Space Centers are the ideal locations to explore rockets, history, and the charms of the Japanese countryside. Here are some of the best spots to experience Japan’s annual rocket launches and learn about the history of the Japanese space exploration industry.

When looking up things to do in winter last year in Hokkaido, one of the events that sparked my interest was Rikubetsu’s “Shibare Festival”, or “Freezing Cold Festival”. People from all over Japan come to experience the bitter cold in Japan’s coldest town. Are you brave enough to brace the cold?

From 8th December 2018 to 24th February 2019, the Studio Ghibli Exhibition is entertaining young and old fans in Toyama City. Come to the Toyama Glass Art Museum and soak in the magic! This creative exhibition draws visitors into an intricate maze. As you figure out your way to the exit, the world of Ghibli envelops you with a wealth of history, culture, arts and philosophy. Don’t worry about getting lost, you’ll be presented with a road map at the entrance.

Let’s explore the history and tradition of kendo up to the beginning of the Meiji Period (1868). This was the last time true samurai fought against each other.

Here are a few things you can experience at the start of the New Year on the beautiful Ryukyu islands, which differ from mainland O-shogatsu.

So, as a result Christmas is, for all intents and purposes, just another regular working day here in Japan. That’s not to say that Japanese people don’t get a winter vacation. In almost all cases, they do. However, typically, the winter and New Year vacation time in Japan ordinarily doesn’t begin until December 27th or 28th and then typically runs until about January 5th.

In the ordered days of the Edo Period, the northern parts of Japan were considered untamed lands of deep mountains and wild forests. One of the ways of entering this region was via the Nikko Kaido highway leading from Edo, now known as Tokyo, to Nikko. The early staging point for a journey on this famous road was Soka.