Glimpses of Japan

As practicing hiking as my hobby, Mt. Nabewari was one of my top-list of trails that I had been willing to visit someday. Mt. Nabewari is not famous for its trails nor shrines; it's known for a hot bowl of udon noodles served at the rest house at the peak of the mountain. I waited until the beginning of December to fully enjoy a warm bowl of udon and leeches. Tanzawa Mountain Range, which includes Mt. Nabewari, is a habitat of leeches, and I heard many people bit by leeches during summer.  So I decided to hike Mt. Nabewari on the first Saturday in December 2020. The weather forecast was sunny, but it turned out to be rain, which made it a tough hike.  I left my house at 4:40 AM to catch the earliest bus from Odakyu Line Shibusawa Station to Okura Bus Stop. Okura Bus Stop is the most common bus stop to hike Mt. Nabewari.  There is a building with a shop, benches, and restrooms near the bus stop where hikers can prepare to start hiking. You can also submit hiking registrati...

I visited the National Museum of Japanese History on November 28, 2020. It's a huge museum of Japanese history that houses and displays 200,000 artifacts focused on history and culture in Japan. The most interesting part about this museum is that it's focused on culture (folklore) in Japan; I feel some cultural anthropological viewpoint here.  The huge museum consists of 6 galleries, each having different themes. I visited the museum for the first time to see their special exhibition, " Gender in Japanese History ."  The special exhibition focused on different times in history and explained how female was presented in each time. It might be surprising to some people to learn that women had quite a power in the Japanese culture in political, financial, family, etc., point of views. Many females had power in feudal times, supporting her husband samurais to govern their areas. Females had taken a lot of part in farming, too. They lost much power after the Meiji Period, a...

I recently visited an exhibition "Landscape of Japan’s Food Culture—Tradition of Eating-out" at the National Museum of Japanese History .  Although the exhibition was not significant, it was interesting to learn some facts about Japanese culture regarding eating-out. I never had an opportunity to see Japanese eating-out culture in such a way.  I became interested in one book that was interested related to this exhibition, " Culture and History of Lunch in Japan (日本人のひるめし) ." The book is not translated into English, so the title is my translation. Forgive me if it's not accurate.  The book turned out to be super interesting with lots of findings. I had never thought about our lunch culture. As the author pointed out, lunch is the least valued meal of the day in Japan. On the other hand, breakfast is the least valued meal in Europe as the origin of the word breakfast means to "break" "fast" between dinner and lunch on the day after.  The author...