Japan Travel in the Know– category –

【A home is a place to long for from a distance】 A journey itself is worthless, but it's what we learn from a journey that counts. It is a part of the subject of my previous article. As some of the readers may notice, it is inspired by ...

【Country towns struggle to survive】 Do your cities (towns or villages) have taglines? This is not a question as an attention getter (as I often do), but I'm really curious. In Japan, with decrease in population, the number of municipal...

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel survived the Great Kanto Earthquake on its opening day in $1923$ due to his innovative floating structure—a profound, immediate validation of his genius. Seeing the meticulous carvings, I recall the dictum: "God is in the details." This detail-orientation is a Japanese trait (our furniture is "full of God"), but it’s a paradox: some Japanese products, like certain cars, excel in detail yet "can't see the wood for the trees," resulting in a poor overall design. This is the Japanese Paradox: excelling at the micro-level while sometimes faltering at the macro-level. We strive to master both the detail and the clean, coherent form.