The Koubai (Red Plum Blossom) Festival at Ushi-Tenjin Kitano Shrine in Tokyo

The Koubai (Red Plum Blossom) Festival at Ushi-Tenjin Kitano Shrine in Tokyo

Every February, Ushi-Tenjin Kitano Jinja (shrine) holds a koubai (red plum blossom) festival to celebrate the blooming ume (Japanese plum) trees that grow around the shrine. Last weekend, a friend and I hopped a train to Bunkyo to check out the festival, and the early blooms.

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Ringing in the New Year With Tokyo’s “Knotted Jizo”

Ringing in the New Year With Tokyo’s “Knotted Jizo”

The New Year holidays are a particularly important time in Japan. We observe a three-day New Year celebration, which officially starts on January 1.

Preparation for the holidays often starts well in advance; we give the house a thorough, deep cleaning, to ensure everything starts the new year fresh and clean. For me, that starts about a week before December 31. When I finish cleaning, I hang the New Year decorations.

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Merry Christmas Tree

Merry Christmas Tree

Christmas is a popular holiday in Japan, even though less than 1% of the population identifies as Christian. People here love holidays, lights, giving (and receiving) gifts, and special food, so Christmas is pretty much a lock on every level. Lots of the major buildings have Christmas trees (many of which are enormous, natural trees rather than artificial ones), but “at-home” trees–to the extent they exist–are usually very small (think table-top size) and artificial. While down in Meguro having my hair cut and having lunch with my friend Kaitlyn last month, I saw some living Christmas trees for sale at

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CHAPTER 33: I Love Rishiri

CHAPTER 33: I Love Rishiri

September 23-24, 2018 This photo supplement tracks the events in CLIMB: Leaving Safe and Finding Strength on 100 Summits in Japan. The captions offer “extra features” that didn’t make it into the book. On the morning of September 23, 2018, in the wake of a violent storm, I boarded a ferry from Wakkanai (Japan’s northernmost major port) to Rishiri Island, a three-hour trip that I hoped would end better for me than it had for the crew of Gilligan’s Island. The sun came up over the water as the ship steamed north; I watched the sunlight break through the lingering clouds and

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