More glimpses of unfamiliar Japan

  Yamata no Orochi is a mythical serpent with 8 heads that appears in the Izumo cycle of ancient Japanese myths set in the time before the d...

Tadao Koga Sculpture Forest Within the grounds of what was Saga Castle , adjacent to the reconstructed palace, are the Saga Prefectural Mus...

石垣島 Just across the road from Yonehara Beach in central Ishigaki Island, Okinawa, is the Yoneko Yaki craft centre where you can see and buy,...

  Buddhist temples in Japan, like temples, shrines, and churches all over the world, are often repositories of a lot of art. Some temples ha...

As I was climbing up towards the first mountain temple on the Shodoshima Pilgrimage I spied ahead of me what I guessed was a kind of shr...

Isshiki Kazari is a unique form of folk art that origjnated in Hirata up in Izumo. The essence of the art is that sculptures are made ou...

On the second day of my walk from Honshu to Shikoku along the Shimanami Kaido I left Kosanji Temple and started walking down the west co...

On a hill overlooking Takanabe on the Miyazaki coast are a strange collection of large and small statues. Some of them are Buddhist deit...

Tadaji, an old temple in the hills outside Hamada has a rather strange collection of wooden statues in their main hall. They were f...