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July 04, 2025
 

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GARDENS

The so-called グリーンカーテン ("gurīn kāten," green curtain) is a vertical garden you can create for your balcony to help provide shade from the summer sun.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 24, 2024
Get started on your at-home garden before the summer hits
Even if you live in a small Tokyo apartment, a garden isn't out of the question. Learn the Japanese needed to visit your local garden center.
Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
LIFE / Style & Design / Longform
May 4, 2024
The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces
Once an exotic curiosity, Japanese gardens have gone on to inspire green thumbs around the world.
A woman and her children at the Minnanouen Kitakagaya community garden in Osaka's Suminoe Ward
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change / OUR PLANET
Nov 5, 2023
How simple steps can help alleviate climate anxiety
From gardening to flood-proofing your home, experts say there are simple ways you can ease some of your concern.
Japan Times
LIFE / Longform
May 29, 2023
In a Japanese garden, you’re never under the weather
As the rainy season approaches, the excess water is set to bring life to green spaces across the nation.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Feb 26, 2023
Kanazawa sets an example for badly needed biodiversity policy in Japan
Japan’s cities may be typically clad in concrete, but there is one reliable source of verdant life: shrines and temples.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 17, 2022
On Chiba's coast, a secret herb garden thrives
Hiromi Sasaki left her life in Osaka and Tokyo behind. Her new one? Grown straight from the soil of the Boso Peninsula.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 18, 2019
Shifting landscapes: The state of traditional Japanese gardens
My neighbor's garden is a wonder to behold. Where you might expect to find trim box hedges, bamboo fences, subtle rock arrangements, junipers, conifers and pine, there are garden gnomes, an ornamental concrete wheelbarrow, pots of begonia, hanging baskets of pansies and an iron rose trellis. At the end...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 18, 2019
'Cutting Back': The collected wisdom of an aesthetic pruner
Breezy, frequently humorous and self-scolding, Leslie Buck's 'Cutting Back: My Apprenticeship in the Gardens of Kyoto' is a poignant look at the storied Japanese world of professional gardening.
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
May 18, 2019
'The Art of the Japanese Garden': Green-fingered insight into Japanese garden spaces
By delving into the history, development and intricate details of Japanese gardens, 'The Art of the Japanese Garden' brings new appreciation and awareness to the art form.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 30, 2017
This no garden variety book on Zen practice
The over-application of the term Zen to describe everything from interior design to restaurant menus pored over by celebrities and fashionistas to the expression a "Zen moment" can be tiresome.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 15, 2017
Leave ordinary life behind at a Japanese garden in Oregon
Visitors to the Portland Japanese Garden are invited to engage their senses in the subtleties of nature.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Sep 20, 2017
With every new construction in Japan, fewer trees
When houses are demolished, there is a very bad habit here of cutting down all the trees on the plot, leaving the ground cleared and empty for new construction.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 24, 2017
Urban trees save megacities millions through cleaner air, cooler buildings: study
Trees in cities reduce air pollution, absorb carbon and protect people during heat waves, saving megacities more than $500 million a year in health care, energy costs and environmental protection, according to new research.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 20, 2017
'Japanese Garden Notes': An informative photo book
"Japanese Garden Notes" is a gorgeous photo book that introduces aspects of traditional Japanese garden design. It walks the reader through the philosophy of "space and passage," "function and art" and "intent and time," explaining why certain details recur and the emotions they are meant to inspire....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 14, 2017
'Daimyo Gardens': a new perspective on Tokyo's venerable green spaces
Though overshadowed by Kyoto, which boasts more than 200 listed gardens, Tokyo likely has the foremost concentration of formal gardens of any Asian capital.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Aug 6, 2016
Reading Zen in the Rocks
The powerful ambiguities of dry landscape arrangements, the inevitable questions they raise in relation to what constitutes a garden, the profundity of concepts and principals, many of them deriving from Taoism and Zen, never fail to baffle the uninitiated. Francoise Berthier, a professor of Japanese...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 21, 2015
The Hiroshima art triangle: a space to get lost in thought
'It's Tokyo minus the stress." That's how one Japanese colleague described Hiroshima to us shortly after my wife, Angeles, and I arrived here, near the end of the last millennium. So, what's its secret? Well, there's its size for a start. And having six rivers flowing through it certainly helps. But,...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 30, 2014
Kiun-Kaku: a garden of elegant period taste
Despite the seasonal limitations for visiting, the Atami Baien, a plum garden, is a better-known sight that the Kiun-Kaku garden, which is an all-seasons landscape also found in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture. Perhaps it is the thirst for scale that has prioritized the plum trees in their large hillside...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jun 28, 2014
Forget the world in a peaceful Okinawan island garden
First came the Ishigaki-teien, a mass of soaring limestone rocks, judiciously placed cycads and two lines of highly concentrated fukugi, the closely-matted leaves of the trees traditionally used in Okinawa as typhoon barriers. Owned by the Ishigaki family, who have lived on the island of the same name...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 3, 2013
Revealing the landscaped gems of North America
North America is not a land mass one immediately associates with gardens. China, Japan, Britain and France, perhaps, lay claim to the mind's strongest landscape associations.
Magnitude 5.5 earthquake jars Tokara Islands amid flurry of seismic activity
A strong quake struck off the Tokara Islands on Thursday afternoon, with the island chain having recorded around 1,000 earthquakes since a burst of seismic activity first began on June 21.
Onosato's yokozuna promotion causes rare quirk in new sumo rankings
Newly promoted yokozuna Onosato holds a copy of the latest banzuke ranking in Anjo, Aichi Prefecture, on Monday.
A prophesied disaster (likely) won’t strike Japan this weekend
A viral manga prediction of a July 5 disaster has gripped Japan with anxiety and triggered an economic impact, but experts warn that while such dates are unreliable, the threat of a massive earthquake remains real. 
Over 900 earthquakes strike Tokara islands in space of two weeks
A screenshot shows many quakes occurring in the Tokara islands over the past 30 days, in this image taken from the U.S. Geological Survey website.
Ghibli’s Isao Takahata exhibit shows how beloved anime is made
“The man who planted Japanese animation” exhibition includes a variety of sketches, drawings and animation cels from Isao Takahata films such as color design for characters by Michiyo Yasuda from "Grave of the Fireflies."
Ghibli’s Isao Takahata exhibit shows how beloved anime is made
“The man who planted Japanese animation” exhibition includes a variety of sketches, drawings and animation cels from Isao Takahata films such as color design for characters by Michiyo Yasuda from "Grave of the Fireflies."
Flag football facing challenges and opportunities ahead
Japan’s women’s flag football team at the 2025 International Bowl in Los Angeles in June. The sport is enjoying continued growth in the country.
From Hokusai’s Great Wave, shinkansen to One Piece: a cultural treasure box for Lego Japan
Michael Ebbesen, general manager of Lego Japan, says Lego bricks based on Japanese culture have a rich global appeal and are sellable around the world.
With farmed fish, RelationFish swims against the tide in fine dining
Chef Hideaki Matsuo (middle) and the staff of Oseto Suisan Fisheries prepare to check on their sustainably farmed fish.
As Southeast Asia heats up, a Japanese cooling giant sees a major opportunity
An employee of Daikin Cambodia explains the use of different tools during an air conditioner installation training session in Phnom Penh. Daikin is one of Japan’s oldest air conditioning companies, but as Japan’s population falls, the firm is keying in on overseas growth.

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