PUBLIC MARKS with tags culture & japon

Japanese culinary culture has always been very particular about seasons and localities. At home or in restaurants, menus change weekly because we eat what's fresh. Food is a way of celebrating the season: time and place.

As the mood grew increasingly acrimonious, some clever-clogs coined a word for the people departing: 'flyjin', a combination of 'fly' and 'gaijin'. The nastiness of the term

Many families are also required to pay for expensive purification rituals.

“I still feel difficulty saying ‘No,’” says Yoshida during her visit in Israel. “When you want to say ‘I am cold’ in Japanese, you say ‘Cold.’ You don’t say ‘I am.’ Nor can you say ‘You.’ There is nothing personal. Even the words that describe emotions are a lot more abstract than in French, which permits me to express myself with greater precision. In France, I first learned to say ‘No,’ and then to say ‘I’ and finally to do what I wanted to do. I went to Paris to break free.”

“I feel relieved that we did not find a solution in this discussion, because now I know, although my own company doesn’t know a solution either, it is not the problem of my company, but the society.” W

Topical units to date focus on Japan in the modern world and early-modern China. The thrust of these explorations extends beyond Asia per se, however, to address "culture" in much broader ways—cultures of modernization, war and peace, consumerism, images of "Self" and "Others," and so on.

A Senninbari (千人針, thousand-person-stitches?) or Thousand stitch belt is a strip of cloth, approximately one meter in length, decorated with 1000 stitches, given as an amulet by women to soldiers on their way to war as a part of the Shinto culture of Imperial Japan.

Learning Japanese business culture is always a hot topic for those looking to deal on this side of the Pacific, but little do many know that Japanese young adults are almost just as confused by the the traditions and hype surrounding the complex world of Japanese shafuu.

Japan experienced an economic boom during World War One (1914 to 1918), and with this emerged new middle class consumers, particularly in the cities. Despite the temporary devastation wrought by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 that destroyed large portions of the capital Tokyo and surrounding areas, the ensuing post-earthquake “reconstruction boom” stimulated an already emergent cosmopolitan urban culture centering on department stores, cafes and cabarets, modern cinema and theater, and cutting-edge innovations in business, industry, and popular culture. Shiseido’s posters and advertisements were at the forefront of this dramatic transformation in consumer society, particularly in regards to marketing new concepts of modern beauty and hygiene.

In a 2009 survey of 1,154 high school girls, by the Culture Studies Institute in Tokyo, hostessing ranked No. 12 out of the 40 most popular professions, ahead of public servant (18) and nurse (22).

Presentation is everything in Japan. Go to any department store and buy even a small sack of tea, and the time and effort put into packing up your purchase is enough to astound any n00b Westerner. This tradition goes way back, of course. First published in 1967 and long out of print, this picture-heavy book of classic Japanese packaging has finally been reprinted in paperback. The title is misleading. There are no step-by-step directions, only black and white images up front with annotations in the back, detailing the materials used, region, specific use/occasion/tradition surrounding each item.

Ka ( 蚊 or か) is mosquito. Kaya (蚊屋 or かや) is mosquito netting. It can also be – and more often is – 蚊帳. Mosquitoes came first and civilization followed with its masses just waiting those little annoying pests. And feed we did. Researching this entry I ran across one source which said that the Japanese had figured out – mainly through the use of the kaya – how to eliminate malaria.

En instituant le Japon comme sentinelle du monde d'aujourd'hui, le Festival d'automne sait que le miroir du pays du Soleil-Levant ne nous permettra sans doute pas de nous reconnaître, mais peut-être de nous redécouvrir, nous, Europe narcissique obligée à la quête de l'autre.