J-Pop Music and Transitional Moods

Japanese pop music can open different tastes of sounds and rhythms reflecting particular moods of performing singers and artists. It is a good experience to enjoy something new and different form J-pop music now. 

Life is so short, so everyone needs to enjoy what he or she likes now. 

Nature and People

Japan has two-third of its land covered by mountains, forests, lakes and hills. Along its thousands-years history, Japanese people have viewed nature not only objective existing thins, but divine-spirit-living entities.

Mount Fuji has lived in Japanese people's minds as the nation's popular image and spirit. More than attraction for tourism, Mount Fuji carries with more divine characteristics and traditional virtues for both government regulations and people's attitudes. 

A tall and old tree lives near a village or crossroad is considered as a sacred tree. Japanese villagers and people have preserved and protected their sacred trees for centuries with their respectful worship because the sacred trees are their guardian spirits. 

Sacred forests with beautiful sites are selected to build Shinto shrines and temples in Japan. Religious institutions have prestiges to locate their foundation among beautiful landscapes.

Foreigners can discover both cultural and religious values and virtues by visiting shrines and temples. 

Japanese people have treasured both virtues and values of bamboo totally different to other Asian people. Their attitudes and bamboo-made products have rooted into Japan's history and culture. 

Japanese people have made 1400 products from bamboo trees. Their creative power and innovative capability have transformed bamboo threes into different daily used products.

Rivers have reflected beauty of nature and other sacred spirits of Japan's culture and tradition. 

Rivers' origins from Springs or smelting snows from mountains. 

Tranquility and virgin characteristics of rivers are preserved in Japan.

Even in a larger city like Hiroshima, a river looks peaceful beauty.

Foreigners usually know Japan though high-tech products and J-Pop cultures from Sony TVs, Walkman Stereo cassette player, PlayStation consoles, Toyota cars, Canon camera, and Doremon comic books and animation  but rarely about Japan's nature and concepts of beauty and divine spirits.

Garden designing composition, house architecture and public construction are harmoniously arranged for comfort and harmony.

People coexist in nature as connecting elements. People also reflect nature through colors, pattern and cultural beauty.

Japanese traditional Kimono for ladies

Mother and daughter in kimono, Japanese tradition clothes

Traditional outfits are still seen on street, marketplaces, temples on regular days, weekends and holidays. People also participate in a watering festival to begin Summer Time.

Young people casually put on comfortable outfit as contemporary mirrors of modern society.

Casual fashion clothes

Japanese maid fashion

Street fashion styles in Japan

Summer fashions for liberal and rebel girls

Japanese school girl fashion (Not school uniform)

Japanese school girl uniform

Japanese salary-men

Japanese salary-man 

Japanese office ladies outfits

Japanese office lady outfits 

Japanese office ladies on streets 

Tokyo Fashion Collection 2011

AKB48 Girls-band

 Arashi Boys-band

Kurara Chibana, Former Miss Universe Japan

Maki Yoko, Japanese actress

Kitagawa Keiko, Japanese Actress

Perfume Girls-band

Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, a member of SMAP Pop boy-band

Miki Ando, Japanese female figure skater

Ryo Ishikawa, Japanese golfer. 

Ueto Aya, Actress and Model and Designer

Ueto Aya in Vietnamese Traditional dress

Rei Kikukawa, Actress

Shiori Katsuna, Actress and Model

Tokyo Dome

Tokyo Fish-market Tsukiji, the largest fish and sea-food market in the world

Japanese bullet-train, Mount Fuji in the backgrouund

Nature has existed before a human society was founded. But over a long history, Japanese people have got along with evolution of nature and co-exited with nature with their unique culture, religions and tradition. 

Transitional Space

It can be strangely challenging for a foreigner to understand Japan's concepts of space and transitional space. But a space is defined quite different in Japanese people's minds when everyone has to treasure a precious composition of a narrow space in each household.

In a big city, everyone seems to collide into one another for three dimensional spaces - house, street and a subway - where they interact invisibly or physically, but each person is culturally and perceptively in a separate space - even a tiny one. The order of arranged things, concepts, definitions, behaviors and expectation is implicitly accepted by all societal members. Automatically recorded announcements and instructions are heard everywhere to remind residents to follow routines and rules and principles for the extraordinary orderly society. 

People walk in an order like a case of using an escalator in a subway. People normally stand on rolling steps on the left side, and left an empty space on a right side for hurry people getting pass easily. 

Even in a crowded street, people are still consciously to keep one subtle personal space between oneself and others. 

In viewing a little garden at one Japanese household or public park, more than values of decoration and natural beauty, Japanese people seem to convert a real size of nature into a miniature. 

The peaceful garden can turn out to a divine world of people for their own world inside their residential place.  

Japanese people find different ways of keeping their cells co-existing with other cells in a public place or public space. Japanese people love reading. But they also read on a train or subway to keep their physical existence separate to other existences. Foreigner can see commuters read on a subway train. People believe knowledge and information are vital for their lives, career and spiritual needs. 

Japanese people also pay more attention to orderly arrangements of personal belongings at home. They are supposed to place shoes, slippers in appropriate directions and positions for guests and family members. 

Before entering a temple or pagoda, people need to purify their physical bodies by washing hands, faces, and mouths at a water fountain in front of the entrance gate. 

Understanding space and purification of Japanese culture is a must for foreign visitors to discover and learn, not only one day or hour, but years. 

Saint Paul, Minnesota June 14, 2011