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Cherry blossoms in early April. The trees are at peak bloom for perhaps three days, maybe five if the weather cooperates. By the second week of April, most of the flowers have already fallen. Walking through…

A small wooden tea house in a Kyoto temple garden. Four guests have entered through a deliberately low doorway — too low to walk through upright; you have to stoop and crawl in, regardless of your…

It’s a Saturday in mid-November at a Japanese shrine. The grounds are full of children — but not ordinary weekend visitors. The girls are wearing kimono, miniature versions of formal adult kimono, with elaborate hair ornaments.…

A teacher and a student sit on opposite sides of a low desk in a quiet room. Between them: a single sheet of thin white paper, a small cup of black ink, a brush as thick…

Most Japanese houses have a small adjacent room set aside for one purpose: bathing. Inside: a deep, almost square tub designed for sitting submerged up to the shoulders, a separate showering area for washing the body…

It’s January 1, 6 a.m. in front of a major Tokyo department store. The store doesn’t open for another two hours. Already, a line of several hundred people stretches along the sidewalk in the cold morning…

A high school student visiting Kitano Tenmangu in Kyoto buys a small embroidered pouch the size of a credit card. The fabric is silk, the embroidery is gold thread, and a tassel hangs from the top.…

You arrive at a Tokyo capsule hotel near a major train station after midnight. Check-in takes two minutes — ID, payment, locker key, slippers. You go upstairs to a corridor lined with what look like horizontal…