The Old Days

For children in Japan, August is natsu yasumi, summer vacation. Even in the countryside, kids these days find it hard to tear themselves away from their game consoles. If you find a boy or girl playing alone near a pond or a water source, they might well be on a stake-out to catch a Lapras, the rarest water-type Pokémon.  Playing smartphone games may help kids master a digital environment from an early age, but it’s a shame they are missing out on “real” outdoor games and pastimes that can stimulate the imagination and creativity, as well as nurture life skills...

  This photo was taken by Ito Jintaro in around 1930. In 2017, almost 90 years later, this photo, along with many others he took, were found by his grandson Katsuaki when he was cleaning a storage room. Ito Katsuaki runs a farmhouse B&B in Nakatsugawa. Named Irori, it is a cozy place by the river in a serene setting. Sato Hideaki, a successful photographer from Tokyo who loves Nakatsugawa’s breathtaking scenery, is a frequent guest at Irori. One of his trips came just after Katsuaki had found these photos. Katsuaki thought it might be a good idea to show...

  June in Japan is when tsuyu (梅雨), the rainy season, arrives. With the weather getting warmer, all that rain contributes to perfect conditions for the cultivation of rice. Because of its particular geographical circumstances, Nakatsugawa, though situated in Yamagata Prefecture, is more suited to the production of rice that is normally grown in areas further north. But Nakatsugawa does also produce typical Yamagata rice brands.  "Haenuki'' is a very popular rice brand of Yamagata. So delicious that Seven-Eleven, the convenience store chain, uses Haenuki rice brand for their rice balls, i.e., onigiri.  Haenuki was established in 1992 and since...

The Japanese Philosophy Behind the Character for Rice The kanji character for rice is 米. It can be dissected as 八 (upside down),十 and 八.  八 (hachi) is kanji for the number eight and 十 (ju) is the kanji for number ten. So, 八十八 is the number eighty-eight. In Japan, it is said that to produce rice it requires 八十八の手間 (hachi-ju-hachi no tema), where and 手間 (tema) means time and effort.  Here the number 88 represents “a lot” and 88の手間 indicates that it takes a lot of time and effort to produce rice.  In Nakatsugawa it often took a bit...

When you watch a Japanese movie or anime about student life, you might often notice that the opening scene is set in April. The scenes are usually filled with cherry blossoms to express the freshness, happiness, and poignancy of spring. They are set in April because that is when the new school year starts in Japan. So was the case with Nakatsugawa until 2013 when the last remaining school, combining elementary school and junior high school had to shut down because they had only eight students left. In earlier times,  there were so many children that each district in Nakatsugawa...