Blogs edited and submitted by Chiho Kamioka

Japanese traditional crafts There are hundreds of Japanese crafts, which are separated categories of pottery, textiles, lacquer ware, metal working, doll making, woodworking, paper making. In her final blog before she retires from teaching at JOI, Mizuno sensei brings one of the textile crafts to the fore – one that is made in her home city of Nagoya. Please read the blog and learn Japanese for...

Japanese traditional toys There are various Japanese traditional toys, folk dolls and games. Most of these have a long history which have roots in Imperial or noble court life or in Buddhist rites and beliefs. The toy introduced in this blog by Kamiyama sensei has it's roots in Zen Buddhism. Read the blog and listen to the natural Japanese in the video for some free Japanese language lessons ! ...

Popular Japanese baby names The Japanese language allows for quite a range of naming. With Chinese characters or Kanji and Hiragana as well, there are many variations of the same name. Most people choose to use Kanji for their children's names, but due to stroke number beliefs (some stroke numbers or combinations are said to bring good or bad fortune) or for the sake of simplicity, Hiragana names...

Cherry Blossom viewing Japan The event of enjoying the blooming of the cherry blossoms is called 'Hanami' in Japanese. It is a popular event and you can find the parks and sightseeing spots full of people on the days leading up to and including the full blossom days. Weekends which have good weather combined with fully blooming trees lead to extreme number of people going out to enjoy picnics, b...

Japanese historical theme parks There are a large number of amusement parks in Japan, some with overwhelming visitor numbers and some less visited. The world renown Disneyland and Universal Studios are a must-see for families with children, but for those of you interested in historical attractions, then there are some great theme parks to enjoy all over Japan. One of these is introduced here by ...