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Remnants: Shoes for a man, a woman and a child left in the Aokigahara Jukai forest on the flank of Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture. The name in part translates as "Sea of Trees," though with good reason it is often referred to as "Suicide Forest."

Inside Japan’s ‘Suicide Forest’

by Rob Gilhooly

I am walking through Aokigahara Jukai forest, the light rapidly fading on a mid-winter afternoon, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by a blood-curdling scream. The natural reaction would be to run, but the forest floor is a maze of roots and slippery rocks and, truth be told, I am lost in this ...

Sommelier Xavier Thuizat thinks the amino acid in sake makes the beverage a perfect match for French cuisine.

With fortunes waning in Japan, sake finds a new home abroad

by Andrew McKirdy

Xavier Thuizat has a pretty clear idea of what doesn’t go well with sake. “I think the worst pairing with sake is sushi,” says Thuizat, head sommelier at Hotel de Crillon, a historic luxury hotel in Paris where Marie Antoinette once lived. “Why? Because it’s rice with rice. Do you want to eat ...

Venture forth: Take advantage of the Go To Travel campaign safely by traveling in accordance with expert health and safety guidelines.

Breaking down Japan’s Go To Travel campaign

by Rachel E.T. Davies

Starting on Oct. 1, the government re-included Tokyo in its Go To Travel campaign, a program subsidizing domestic travel that aims to encourage spending and boost an economy suffering the effects of a global pandemic. Initially left out amid the capital’s rising coronavirus case numbers, Tokyoite...

The more you know: Japanese estate agents can use the "ba … hodo" structure to express how distance to the sea and the price of an apartment relate to one another.

The more you study ‘ba … hodo,’ the better you’ll be at Japanese

by Akemi Tanahashi

Eki ni chikakereba chikai hodo yachin ga takaku narimasu. (The closer it is to the station, the higher the rent.) Situation 1: Mr. Tien heads to a real estate agency. ティエン： ここのアパートはそのアパートより便利そうですけど、家賃が高いですね。 不動産屋： 駅に近ければ近いほど家賃が...

Cultural spread: Apples, pomegranates and honey are some of the sweet things eaten on Rosh Hashanah.

No need to tiptoe around religion in Japanese

by Eric Margolis

Remote working this year saved me from the lengthy explanations that accompany my observance of the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which typically fall in late September and early October. In Japan, usually saying ユダヤ教の休日です (yudayakyō no kyūjitsu desu, they’re Jew...