Although Mt. Fuji is undoubtedly the crown jewel of Japan’s natural landscape, another landform, tucked away near the tip of the Kii Peninsula, rivals Fuji in both beauty and cultural significance. Such a place is Nachi-no-taki, a waterfall that towers over the surrounding woodland like Mt. Fuji dominates above the five lakes. Although Nachi Falls […]
36 Views of Mt. Fuji
It’s hard to find something so significant to a country that also means different things to each person. For the past 7 weeks, it’s been interesting to see how Mt. Fuji serves a variety of purposes for the Japanese from recreation to business. Those who have either climbed Fuji or live near it all have […]
Building Attitudes towards Nature
The following discussion will spring from analysis done by Stephen Kellert. Kellert recognized nine attitudes towards wildlife (which I will generalize to nature more generally) and quantified the extent to which people in America and Japan identified with those attitudes (1993). American responses showed a preference for wildlife in natural or wild circumstances. Japanese responses, […]
Sayonara, Satoyama Seniors
I’m sitting in a bakery café in Shinjuku, a popular shopping and business district of Tokyo. The floor rumbles as trains pass underneath the building, but it’s largely drowned out by the upbeat ‘60s American jazz and lively social chatter among fashionable Japanese women. I realize that it’s been a little while since I’ve seen […]
Rediscovering My Inner Buddha: My Journey in Japan
“Namu Amida Butsu Namu Amida Butsu Nam mô A-di-đà Phật…” When I was a child, at the start of every school year, my mom and I would be filling in my particulars in my yearly report book at school. I still remember how she would put a little mark in the check box by the […]