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A summer evening in a Japanese city. People streaming toward a fireworks display along the river. Among them: dozens of women and men in soft-cotton robes — pale blues, indigos, pinks, navy with bamboo motifs —…

The “matcha latte” sits in front of you at a Western café — pale green, sweetened, topped with a little design in the foam, the brand name of the drink chain printed on the cup. The…

A small confectionery shop in Kyoto, mid-October. The window display has shifted overnight. Yesterday’s pink-petal sweets are gone; in their place are small, perfectly shaped maple leaves in russet and gold, a few miniature chestnuts in…

A child opens the lid of their bento box at school. Inside: a flat field of white rice, almost the entire surface, and at the dead center, a single dark red plum. Nothing else. No protein,…

You’re at a traditional Japanese inn in the morning. A breakfast tray arrives. There is rice, miso soup, grilled fish, pickled vegetables, and a small ceramic cup containing a quivering brown mass laced with thick white…

A Japanese couple is about to name their child. They have a shortlist of possible kanji combinations that produce the same phonetic name. The grandparents are consulted. A naming specialist is sometimes consulted. The choice is…

You’re at a Japanese shrine. There’s a small wooden box near the offering area with a slot in the lid. You drop a 100-yen coin into a separate box, pick up the cylinder, shake it, and…

A pine tree, fifty centimeters tall, in a shallow ceramic pot. The trunk is gnarled in a way pine trunks usually only get after a hundred and fifty years on a windswept ridge. The needles are…

You walk into a Japanese stationery shop in early January and notice a row of round, red, scowling dolls on a shelf — squat, eyebrow-heavy, with white circles where eyes should be. The shop owner picks…

You walk into a small Japanese restaurant and miss it for a moment. There, on a shelf near the entrance, a small ceramic cat with one paw raised, looking faintly cheerful. You’ve seen these before —…