My junior high school has a Koto club (the girls in the club were too shy to be in the photo). Koto is usually called a Japanese harp, but it’s played by kneeling on the floor next to it. And Koto music is written in traditional Japanese numbers (which string to pluck or strum). It has a plaintive sound that I can listen to for about one song.
Tanabata was a minor Japanese holiday on July 7th. Tanabata is based on two constellations which are closest in the sky on July 7th every year. If it rains on July 7th, the holiday isn’t celebrated that year! Somehow, also associated with this holiday, people write their hopes on a colorful piece of paper and tie it to cut bamboo branches.
These photos of Japanese fashion were taken on my cell phone (luckily I downloaded them before promptly losing my cell phone on Tuesday!).
Punky Brewster is alive and well, living in Himeji!
Many people have good sized gardens where they grow vegetables for their families. The remaining veggies they can sell to grocery stores. Because of all this homegrown food, it’s common to see onions and persimmons and other produce hanging outside of houses like this.
This is the machine where you buy train tickets. It’s not too complicated. There is a big sketch above the machine showing the fare to each stop, hopefully with names in the latin alphabet. You feed in your money and hit the amount of the ticket and it spits out your ticket and change. If you have problems, there is a button to hit, and a conductor opens that dark blue plate to the right of the machine and pops his head out to help. The first time I witnessed that I jumped back startled.
I’ve been meaning to take a photo of the tree at the house across the street from our bus stop. You can see how they’ve pruned and trained it to go over the gate very beautifully.
There is a series of these posters against smoking. They’re all quite humorous and a bit random. You may have seen the last one before; I took it back in January. Click on the photo to zoom in if you have trouble reading the writing.
Another weird Japanese food idea – red bean Kit Kats. The Japanese branch of Nestle/Kit Kat ought to get an award(?) for their creativity. So far I’ve seen all sorts of fruit flavored Kit Kats (banana, mango, strawberry), as well as green tea, white chocolate, and possibly cherry or cherry blossom flavored. And now red bean. It was just a matter of time.
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