Kosoan exterior © Alma Reyes
A Kyoto in Tokyo
Calmness in Kosoan Teahouse
Anyone without spiritual aspirations is a fool.
(Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro)
Showing posts with label Cities / Tokyo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cities / Tokyo. Show all posts
Monday, September 22, 2025
A Kyoto in Tokyo / Calmness in Kosoan Teahouse
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Bamboo forest of Houkokuji Forest and sea getaway from Tokyo
Houkokuji Temple © Alma Reyes
Bamboo forest of Houkokuji
Forest and sea getaway from Tokyo
Take o watta youna hito.
(A man like fresh-split bamboo)
Just about 50 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, Kamakura remains to be a favorite easy getaway from the metropolis. Apart from its beaches off the Sagami bay in Enoshima island, the coastal town bears important historical significance. It established the base for the powerful Minamoto clan, which dominated Japan between 1192 to 1333. During the Kamakura period, the town’s surrounding mountains and sea served as strategic protective barriers against military rebels. Various sects of Zen Buddhism were also developed during this era; thus, required the establishment of many temples, which exist till today.
Wednesday, January 3, 2024
Tokyo / « Norwegian Wood » and « Drive My Car » by Haruki Murakami and « Breast and Eggs » by Mieko Kawakami
Tokyo: « Norwegian Wood » and « Drive My Car » by Haruki Murakami and « Breast and Eggs » by Mieko Kawakami
After more than ten years, I finally returned to Japan and was able to stay a little longer than on my first visit. I was there again for a conference held at a university located in the Roppongi district, just across from Tokyo’s superb National Arts Center
Sunday, April 9, 2023
The Shinkansen / Japan’s Bullet Train
The Shinkansen: Japan’s Bullet Train
Travel TechnologyThe original Shinkansen linked Tokyo and Osaka in 1964, and since then the network has grown to span Japan from Kyūshū to Hokkaidō, with its trains moving at ever-increasing speeds.
From Kyūshū to Hokkaidō
The Shinkansen, or “bullet train,” is a Japanese icon. The first route was the Tōkaidō Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka, completed ahead of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and named after the highway that linked east and west Japan in the Edo period (1603–1868). Its trains were the first in the world to achieve a speed of 200 kilometers per hour and became a symbol of Japan’s postwar recovery and subsequent economic miracle. In 1972, the San’yō Shinkansen linked Osaka to Okayama, and this line was further extended in 1975 as far as Hakata in Kyūshū’s Fukuoka Prefecture.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Michael Wolf / Tokyo Compression
Tokyo Compression
by Michael Wolf
Michael Wolf is known for his large-format architectural photos of Chicago and primarily of Hong Kong, where he has been living for more than 15 years.
His latest pictures have also been created in a big city: Tokyo. But this time Tokyo’s architecture is not the topic. Michael Wolf’s “Tokyo Compression” focuses on the craziness of Tokyo’s underground system. For his shots he has chosen a location which relentlessly provides his camera with new pictures minute per minute.
Every day thousands and thousands of people enter this subsurface hell for two or more hours, constrained between glass, steel and other people who roll to their place of work and back home beneath the city. In Michael Wolf’s pictures we look into countless human faces, all trying to sustain this evident madness in their own way.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Haruki Murakami / Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage
Japanese readers flocking to buy Haruki Murakami book with long, mysterious title
The Associated Press and Yuri Kageyama, The Associated Press
TOKYO – Japanese readers are flocking to buy Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, even though almost nothing has been disclosed about the book by one of the nation’s most respected and commercially successful writers.
The novel that went on sale Friday is the first in three years for the writer frequently mentioned as a Nobel Prize contender. It’s available only in Japanese for now.
Publisher Bungeishunju said first printing totals half a million copies for “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage.” The original title reads just as mysteriously.
“We did not want to give any preconceptions to the reader,” said Tomoya Tanimura of Bungeishunju, which has set up a special online site that has little more than the title and that Murakami is the author.
The secrecy seemed to matter little to his fans.
“I want to savour reading this book. I love the language of Haruki Murakami, his special sense of Japanese. I am so excited,” said Yu Wada, a Tokyo translator and among the 20,000 people who ordered the book in advance through online retailer Amazon.
The orders at Amazon are outpacing Murakami’s last “1Q84,” a three-part Orwellian novel, which was also a hit, according to Bungeishunju.
Wada has only read the first few pages but is satisfied. It is dark, she says, and it starts out with a character who looks back on his younger days, when he “lived thinking about practically nothing else than dying.”
Murakami’s internationally known works include “Norwegian Wood” and “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.” An accomplished translator of American literature, Murakami counts among his influences F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler. He taught at Princeton University in the early 1990s.
Murakami is a prolific non-fiction writer as well, and documented the victims of a cult’s sarin-gas attack on Tokyo’s subway in 1995.
Murakami has also become an aggressive critic of Japan’s pro-nuclear policies since the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
“Norwegian Wood,” was made into a 2010 movie, directed by Tran Anh Hung, a poetic coming-of-age love story exploring the themes of sanity and suicide in the backdrop of the late 1960s.
Murakami’s reticence and reclusiveness have enhanced his glamour. And, true to form, Murakami has revealed little about his latest book, except for a brief statement.
“I started out writing a short story, but as I was working on it, it got longer naturally. I’ve rarely experienced this — maybe not since ‘Norwegian Wood,’” he said.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)