What Does Japan Look Like to You?
There is the Japan everyone comes to see — and another Japan hiding in plain sight.
What does Japan look like to you?
Perhaps it is Tokyo at night — trains arriving on time, convenience stores open around the clock, vending machines on almost every corner, and a city that somehow manages to move millions of people with remarkable order.
Perhaps it is sushi, cherry blossoms, temples, anime, or Mount Fuji.
All of those things are Japan.
But they are not the whole of it.
Japan today is a thoroughly modern country. We enjoy convenience every day, often without thinking much about it. Packages arrive quickly. Public transportation works. Food is easy to find almost anywhere. Even in a small town, you are rarely very far from something that makes daily life easier.
At the same time, Japan no longer has the overwhelming economic presence it once seemed to have.
The country that amazed the world with its rapid postwar growth now appears quieter. Its relative economic position has declined, the population is shrinking, and from abroad Japan may sometimes look like a country whose best days are behind it.
Maybe even some Japanese people feel that way.
But I don't think Japan is finished.
Not even close.
Because there is another Japan underneath the statistics.
A country that begins with a story
According to Japan's oldest mythology, Japan did not simply appear as a piece of land on a map.
The islands themselves were born from the gods.
Of course, this is mythology, not history in the modern scientific sense.
But myths matter.
They tell us something about how people once understood the world around them — and sometimes, those old ways of seeing things remain long after people stop consciously believing the stories.
In Japan, nature was never simply scenery.
Mountains, enormous trees, waterfalls, rocks, rivers and even unusual places in the landscape could be regarded as dwelling places of kami — spiritual presences that are difficult to translate neatly into the English word “god.”
There is an old expression:
yaoyorozu no kami — 八百万の神.
Literally, it means “eight million gods.”
It does not really mean that someone once counted exactly eight million of them.
It means something closer to countless spirits.
The idea that the world around us may contain something deserving of respect.
You can still feel it
Most Japanese people today are not walking around consciously thinking about yaoyorozu no kami.
Modern Japan is modern Japan.
We use smartphones. We shop online. We commute to work. We worry about salaries, school, mortgages, and what to eat for dinner.
But I think some of the old sensibility is still here.
You can see it when people pause before entering a shrine.
You can see it in the way an old tree may be protected rather than simply removed.
You can see it in seasonal food, in festivals, in the attention paid to the first blossoms of spring or the changing leaves of autumn.
And perhaps you can see it in something as small as cherry blossoms.
When people outside Japan imagine cherry blossoms, they usually imagine pale pink flowers.
And yes, most of them are.
But cherry blossoms can be green, too.
There is a variety called Gyoiko, with blossoms whose petals contain streaks of green.
It appears a little later in spring than the famous Somei Yoshino.
You could visit Japan during cherry blossom season, take hundreds of photographs of pink trees, and leave without ever knowing that green cherry blossoms existed.
They were there.
You just didn't happen to see them.
And that, in a way, is what this site is about.
Japan is often hiding in plain sight
The famous parts of Japan are famous for good reasons.
You should see Kyoto.
You should eat sushi.
You should stand beneath cherry blossoms if you have the chance.
I am not here to tell you that the popular things are somehow less authentic just because they are popular.
But there is always another layer.
A small restaurant you would walk past because there is no English menu.
A landscape that never appears on a “Top 10 Japan” list.
A seasonal dish whose meaning is difficult to understand from its ingredients alone.
A custom that Japanese people themselves rarely stop to explain because, to us, it is simply normal.
Or a green cherry blossom appearing a little later than the pink ones everyone came to see.
Google can tell you what exists.
I want to tell you what I would notice.
What I would choose.
And sometimes, what might be worth looking at twice.
So when you come to Japan, by all means enjoy the convenience, the cities, the food, and the places you have dreamed of seeing.
But every now and then, look beyond them.
There is an old country living quietly inside the modern one.
You may find it in a shrine.
You may find it in a mountain.
You may find it on your dinner plate.
Or you may find it in a cherry blossom you didn't know could be green.
What does Japan look like to you?
Perhaps by the time you leave, the answer will be a little different.
