Cherry blossom season in Japan The cherry blossom season usually occurs from the end of March and often reaching full bloom in early April. However, possibly due to global warming, the season for the flowers reaching full bloom has been getting earlier and earlier. 2021 saw the earliest blooming since the 1400s! The brevity of the flowers' lifespan is often juxtaposed with the fragility of life...

Changes in lifestyles during the pandemic Lifestyles have changed greatly during the Coronavirus pandemic. Many people have had to spend time indoors more. And a large number of people have taken to working from home, or change their ways of commuting. Have you made any changes to your lifestyle? Well, Japanese online school teacher Chiharu Takase has been reflecting on things she would like to ...

Virtual tours online The Covid pandemic, and its impact on global tourism has led to a lot of innovation in the online tourism and virtual tours. The phenomenon had been widely used by museums all over the world and has grown to include many site-seeing spots and World Heritage sites. In this blog for Japanese learners, Japanese teacher Sachiko Someya introduces her own experience of a virtual t...

Birthdays in Japan Did you know that Japanese people didn't celebrate birthdays traditionally? New Year's Day was believed to be the time when everyone aged another year so the importance of individual birthdays was introduced into the culture as the nation became more westernized. Now in modern Japan though, birthdays are often celebrated with cake and presents. Many people go out to eat at res...

Spring in Japan Japan is often said to be a land of four seasons. But there are actually a lot stages of the seasons including early, mid and late seasons. With early spring in the air, there are a lot of indications of the changing of the season, apart from the gradually warming days. There are special fruits and vegetables that become edible at this time, and there are plants and animal reacti...