We all know the feeling. Empty parking lots, highway rest stops, abandoned convenience stores. They all give us an eerie sensation due to the fact…

Maehara Kouei Shouten 前原光榮商店, makers of Western style umbrellas, now in their 70th year of business, are famous for producing elegant, sturdy umbrellas made with…

There are many things a teenage girl would do to get a puppy, and Alina Zagitova, the Russian figure skater, showed that winning a gold…

Cat owners universally understand the struggles of dealing with shed fur and have probably resigned themselves to always having a certain amount of it on…

If you plan to make a journey to the scenic Sanriku Coast of Japan in Northern Honshu, as we reported earlier this year when we…

Bonsai. The ancient Japanese art of producing miniature trees in small containers. Contemplative and philosophical (the art was associated with Zen Buddhism in its early…

When you think of olive oil, Japanese cuisine doesn’t normally come to mind, let alone pairing with sake. However, as we discovered upon our visit…

Japan has no shortage of papercraft vituosos who can create wonderful objects of art. For example, we have seen intricate kirie papercutting by Shinobu Ohashi…

Japanese freelance concept artist E wo kaku Peter has a unique flair for imagining technologies future and past paired together in realistic illustrations. His clear…

A big company acquiring premises in a historical area risks spoiling the aesthetics of the whole street. To keep the locals happy it’s important to…

With the growing popularity of Instagram in Japan, pictures of cute and colorful desserts and mouth-watering dishes seem to be everywhere in social media. Photogenic…

Totti Candy Factory’s giant rainbow cotton candies became an icon of Harajuku recently, attracting those in search of the most Instagrammable foods in Tokyo. After…

On Wednesday, a committee of organizers announced the two official mascots for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Ryo Taniguchi, a character designer and…

Twitter user NON (@TTR03s2) wanted to give a cute prop to her one year old Chinchilla called Totoro and shared the result online. Like the…

It wasn’t too long ago that a Japanese art teacher and designer unleashed wearable, hyper-realistic gigantic felt cats heads that both wowed and terrified the…