Festivals, seasonal customs, crafts and artisan traditions.
A temple in Hagi with more than 1,000 cat figurines offers a 1,000-yen charm against harassment. It shows a dog, for a reason hidden in the word 'harass', and it is meant to calm whoever is about to snap.
In 1926, a well drilled for oil in Hokkaido hit hot water. Toyotomi Onsen smells of petroleum, and guests treating skin conditions made up about 40 percent of its overnight stays in fiscal 2019.
Restorers found 95 rolled sheets inside the secret Kannon of Shojuin Temple in Kyoto, one with ink writing not yet studied. Why Buddhist statues held objects, and how to visit the temple.
A private system will rate Japan's onsen on five criteria for the water in the tub and name 21 three-star sites on October 26. How it differs from notices required since 2005 and a label abolished in 2019.
About 1,000 crows roosted on the Asian Games race walk course in Nagoya, and a hospital ruled out firecrackers, so the city hired a falconer. In Japan, scaring off birds is a falconer's everyday job.
A wild fox dropped a mole at a home in Yonago, Japan, and walked away. It has visited about seven times. Japan's internet thought of a school folktale; a mole researcher has a more practical theory.
Japan had 2,730 sento left at the end of fiscal 2024. Under a 1946 ordinance, prefectures still cap their prices, and Tokyo calculates its cap like a utility rate. It rose to 600 yen in August 2026.
Thirty players throwing together need about 64,201 rounds to leave one winner. The widely quoted 63,917 counts only the wait until the first non-tie, and just 4.61 throws settle anything.
A PNAS study rebuilt the songs of 9 extinct species from 20 fossils in Inner Mongolia. The 5 to 7 kHz result lands in the same band as Japan's 4.5 kHz bell cricket, listened to for 1,000 years.
Shingo, a village of 1,919 in northern Japan, has had a tomb of Jesus since 1935, declared by a promoter of a forged chronicle. Almost nobody there believes it, yet the Shinto rite hit its 62nd edition in 2026.
Japan cremated 99.98% of its dead in fiscal 2024. But the rate was 36.2% in 1915, and the Meiji government banned cremation in 1873 before reversing itself. Land, cholera policy and local ordinances built that number.