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LIFE

Travel

Tokoro Ruins Museum Director Yuuki Nakamura says that 'most Japanese people don’t know' the history of the Okhotsk culture, but he and others are betting that travelers might be intrigued enough to visit and find out more.

LIFE / Travel

Feb 22, 2025

Bear skulls and pit dwellings: Hokkaido aims to sell ancient history

By Justin Randall

The Okhostk culture thrived in northern Hokkaido from the fifth to ninth centuries and may have provided the Ainu with some of their best-known rituals.

In Sakaiminato, Tottori Prefecture, an entire street is dedicated to Japanese spirits, monsters and ghouls — a sign that the overall region is rich in spine-tingling tourist draws.

LIFE / Travel

Feb 22, 2025

Shimane and Tottori to bewitch tourists with supernatural charms

By Zoria Petkoska

The two prefectures are leaning on spooky folklore to draw more travelers.

While Japan deals with so-called overtourism, the rest of the world is just getting back to pre-pandemic levels of visits from international travelers.

LIFE / Travel

Jan 24, 2025

Global tourism is back to pre-COVID highs

By Daniel Silva

Global tourism generated nearly $1.6 trillion (about ¥250 trillion) in 2024, about 3% more than the previous year and 4% more than in 2019.

For some time away from Tokyo's suffocating urban sameness, Yamagata Prefecture is home to a soothing array of natural abundance.

LIFE / Travel

Jan 18, 2025

For tourists in search of seasonal sights, Yamagata makes its case

By Johan Brooks

Japan’s much-lauded four seasons aren’t felt as much in Tokyo as they are in the full, rural vistas of Yamagata Prefecture.

Scheduled to welcome its first guests in early 2025, the Waldorf Astoria Osaka is just one of many luxury hotel openings Japan has seen in recent months.

LIFE / Travel

Jan 4, 2025

Japan’s ‘quiet revolution’ of luxury travel nears fruition

By Tan Pin Yen

“The Japanese luxury travel scene has undergone quite the metamorphosis over the past decade,” says one industry insider.

Tonoike Sake Brewery has been gearing their brewery toward tourism since the late 1980s, attempting to lure tourists to the town of Mashiko.

LIFE / Travel

Jan 3, 2025

Traveling for sake's sake: The emergence of brewery tourism in Japan

By Yukana Inoue

While sake consumption has declined in Japan, breweries across the nation are taking advantage of a rise in overseas interest to promote themselves as tourist destinations.

At each shrine and temple, priests create festive, decorative go-shuin stamps, and you can collect the marks of all seven of the lucky gods on one piece of paper (called a shikishi) to serve as a good-luck talisman.

LIFE / Travel

Dec 27, 2024

Start the new year not with one temple visit, but seven

By Zoria Petkoska

The seven lucky gods pilgrimage is a less hurried alternative to the often-crowded first temple or shrine visit of the year.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Passengers that were on a morning train attacked by members of the Aum Shinrikyo group wait for medical assistance outside Kasumigaseki Station on March 20,1995.

The day a religious cult brought terror to Tokyo

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Challenging spirit and teamwork keep ANA flying high

Challenging spirit and teamwork keep ANA flying high

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