So how long have you been running your business? The Houshi
Onsen in Komatsu, Japan. About a 2.5 hour train ride north from Kyoto is the Houshi Onsen complex was founded in 718.
The legend states that the god of Mount Hakusan visited a Buddhist priest and told him to uncover an underground hot spring in a nearby village. He found the hot spring and asked his disciple, a woodcutter’s son named Gengoro Sasakiri, to build and operate a spa on the site. His family has run a hotel in Komatsu ever since.
The structure houses 450 people in 100 rooms. For generations, Houshi proprietors have borne the name Zengoro Houshi.
The current proprietor is the
46th Zengoro!
posted by somnambulist
on Sep 30, 2009 -
27 comments
The scene was the siege of Shanghai, the year 1932. It was more than half a year since the Mukden Incident had provided a pretext for Japan to
invade Manchuria and begin moving down through Northern China. Three Imperial Japanese soldiers from an engineering division died in a bomb blast that took out a section of the Chinese fortifications, allowing Japanese forces to surge through the breach and advance.
The fallen soldiers became known as the "
Three Human Bombs" (Bakudan Sanyushi / 爆弾三勇士).
Memorials were built and
murals were painted and the Three Human Bombs were remembered as gallant and selfless heroes who gave their lives for the greater good of Japan, lauded on stage, in film, and
in song. A
military medal was created to award heroism in honor of the three.
Problem is,
it was all a lie. The story of the Three Human Bombs was one of the most successful propaganda campaigns of the early twentieth century.
posted by XMLicious
on Sep 30, 2009 -
14 comments
Japan is facing a demographic crisis that will shrink the population dramatically. The Japanese aren't having babies, and the country won't accept immigrants to help bolster the population.
Japan: Robot Nation looks at a uniquely Japanese solution.
[more inside]
posted by Extopalopaketle
on Sep 21, 2009 -
55 comments
Japan's opposition party,
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), is projected to win a
landslide victory tomorrow, ending the 52-year reign of the
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Furthermore, according to a survey conducted by the popular Asahi Shimbun newspaper,
the DPJ could win a two-thirds majority, enabling them to roll legislation through the Diet unabated. Despite the projections, the two parties are still
battling hard. Washington is
following these elections very closely, because of the man who could be the next prime minister,
Yukio Hatoyama.
[more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing
on Aug 29, 2009 -
46 comments
The
funicular railway is a kind of
cable-based railway that gives me great joy because of its peculiar shape and its uselessness for doing anything other than what it does. A funicular carriage is generally
stairstepped or
terraced, so you can't repurpose these cars for other uses. They generally work in a particular way, too, as pairs: one goes up the mountain, one comes down the mountain! Maybe this kind of glee is why they seem to be especially popular in Japan today, where they can be taken to many popular sightseeing areas--but a fair number of funicular railway riders are probably there for the journey, not the destination.
[more inside]
posted by wintersweet
on Aug 25, 2009 -
64 comments
The Guardian ran a series of articles looking at the state of high-speed rail travel today. France intends to
double its length of track over the next decade, and China is planning
a massive rail-building programme, including a high-speed line which will halve the travel time between Beijing and Shanghai to 4 hours.
In Germany, domestic air travel is rapidly going extinct, and Spain's network has made
day trips between Madrid and Barcelona a possibility. The USA, which has long neglected its rail network, is
planning up to 10 high-speed lines. Meanwhile, Britain's only high-speed line goes to France, but there is talk of
a 250mph line from London to Birmingham and beyond, possibly by the early 2020s. Meanwhile, the CEO of France's rail operator, SNCF,
weighs in on what the UK should do.
posted by acb
on Aug 7, 2009 -
49 comments
"And much like Christmas, originally about the birth of a religious savior-figure named Jesus, is now about buying things for people and hoping that they buy more things for you, much how Easter, originally about the death of a religious savior-figure named Jesus, is now about receiving rabbit- or egg-shaped chocolates, now and forever Obon is about
collecting all of the Pokemon." Japan, trains, marketing, pachinko, hordes of stamp-seeking children.
posted by silby
on Aug 7, 2009 -
34 comments
Kōfuku-no-Kagaku (幸福の科学), also called Happy Science, is a relatively new religious and spiritual movement, founded in Japan in October 1986. The organization is gaining ground world-wide, with the international headquarter office in central Tokyo, 6 local temples located in London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seoul and Taiwan, and an additional 37 local offices around the world. The group's leader, Master Ryuho Okawa, has is not limiting the scope of the movement to politics, and in May 2009 the
Happiness Realization Party was formed, with
over 300 HRP candidates running for the coming general election. To provide background on the religion and political movement, here is
a little investigation of Happy Science by MeFi's own
shii [via
mefi projects]
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 28, 2009 -
32 comments
Children Full of Life - grade 4 students in Kanazawa, Japan learn deep life lessons from their incredible teacher and from each other. I strongly recommend this as awesome, but one caveat: keep tissues handy. (5 parts, 40 minutes total, English)
posted by madamjujujive
on Jul 25, 2009 -
48 comments
"Nisan didn’t mean to fall in love with Nemutan. Their first encounter -- at a comic-book convention that Nisan’s gaming friends dragged him to in Tokyo -- was serendipitous. Nisan was wandering aimlessly around the crowded exhibition hall when he suddenly found himself staring into Nemutan’s bright blue eyes... 'I’ve experienced so many amazing things because of her,' Nisan told me, rubbing Nemutan’s leg warmly. 'She has really changed my life.'
Nemutan doesn’t really have a leg. She’s a stuffed pillowcase — a 2-D depiction of a character, Nemu, from an X-rated version of a PC video game called Da Capo." The New York Times' Lisa Katayama on "2-D lovers" in Japan, the latest outgrowth of
otaku subculture.
posted by digaman
on Jul 23, 2009 -
166 comments
Sure you consider yourself a retro 8-bit gaming geek, but have you played Udon Boy in Ramen Land, or Kung Fu Psycho Rider? Don't feel bad, they're from Japanese culture store Meteor's annual
Famicase, an
exhibition of imaginary games.
posted by artifarce
on Jun 5, 2009 -
7 comments
Lullatone are a half-Japanese, half-American duo based in Japan who make music that can probably best be described as twee folktronica; a recent EP of theirs is titled "Little Songs About Raindrops". And now, you can make your own with
their Raindrop Melody Maker Flash web toy, which looks a bit like a pastel-coloured
Tenori-On:
posted by acb
on Jun 4, 2009 -
9 comments
The
Graduate University for Advanced Studies, casually referred to as
Sōkendai (a contraction of Sōgō kenkyū daigakuin daigaku), was founded in 1988 as the 96th
national university in Japan. Amongst other things, it is home to the
Soken Taxa Web Server which in turn hosts
the first online Japanese Ant Color Image Database that currently lists 273 species of ant, the
Illustrated Guide of Marine Mammals and the
Marine Mammals Stranding DataBase, the
Mammalian Crania Photographic Archive that currently includes 704 specimens, the
Morning Glories Database that covers the many mutants of
Ipomoea nil, closely related species and interspecific hybrids, the
Makino Herbarium Database, which is named after the pioneering Japanese botanist,
Tomitaro Makino, and the
Japanese Bees Image Database.
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 20, 2009 -
5 comments
Following the death of his sister to brain cancer,
Motoi Yamamoto adopted salt as his primary artistic medium. In Japanese culture salt is not only a necessary element to sustain human life, but it is also a
symbol of purification. He uses salt in loose form to create
intricate labyrinth patterns on the gallery floor or in
baked brick form to construct large interior structures. As with the labyrinths and unnavigable passageways,
Motoi Yamamoto views his installations as exercises which are at once futile yet necessary to his healing.
posted by netbros
on Mar 20, 2009 -
25 comments
Clearly you are not yet beautiful enough. Not to worry, there's help from Japan & Kyrgystan:
Placenta 30,000 contains 30,000 mg of 100% undiluted horse-origin placenta.
[more inside]
posted by slater
on Mar 18, 2009 -
56 comments
