Sacred fire saved from non-sacred fire on Miyajima. Hiroshima Prefecture’s Miyajima Island, famed for the torii gate that stands in the water just off its coast, is home to one of Japan’s most beautiful and historically significant concentrations of shrines and temples. Among them, though, Daishoin Temple is especially noteworthy, as it’s the oldest Buddhist […]

Archaeologists have unearthed a rare circular water temple dedicated to a god of mud.

Festival of the Steel Phallus deity gets a steel lid in a rural city. For all its staid traditions and formal etiquette, Japanese culture can be surprisingly uninhibited in ways that can leave visitors from abroad clutching their pearls. Take, for example, a new manhole lid that’s just been installed in front of Kobunoki Shrine […]

Mr. Sato starts his urban exploration of Tokyo to catch a glimpse of local neighborhoods’ pasts before they’re changed forever. There’s never a time when Tokyo isn’t changing. The city is so big and has so many people that there’s always some part of it that’s being renovated, redeveloped, or otherwise reimagined. Oftentimes those changes […]

Hidden away in woods of the old Cally Estate is a little gothic tower, simply known as "The Temple".

The Temple was built as a folly in 1779, as a decorative feature to be seen from Cally House across the parklands. The Temple is now surrounded by trees but these are the result of the Forestry Commission who purchased the land in 1933 and would never have previous blocked the views.

The Cally…

The ume of Ikegami grow up a terraced hillside, and under the radar. Though they tend to get overshadowed by the more famous cherry blossoms, Japan’s plum blossoms, or ume, are not to be missed. Flowering in a range of colors from pure white to a deep purplish pink, ume are lovely to look at […]