Visions of Paradise: the Japanese garden in the UK is a free exhibition taking place in Bath from 24 October to 15 November 2013.

There will be a preview on 23 October at 6:30 pm, followed by an illustrated talk on Japanese gardens in the UK.

On 29 October from 7:30 there will be another illustrated talk on the gardens of Japan.

On 7 November from 7:30 the final talk of the event is on the art of Japanese woodblock prints.

Opening times for the exhibition: Mon-Sat 10 am - 4 pm
- Free entry to the exhibition -
Entry to the talks £5 payable on the day
Venue: The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution,
16-18 Queen Square, Bath BA1 2HN

Due to redevelopment in Regent Street, the Mitsukoshi department store has sadly closed after 34 years in London. The same building also housed the Japan Centre and the Japanese book store JP Books. Mitsukoshi apparently plan to open a new London store once they have found a suitable site and fortunately the other two shops have already relocated. JP Books is now at 24-25 Denman Street and the Japan Centre has moved to 19 Shaftesbury Avenue, so neither is far way from the old site. To promote the relocation, the Japan Centre is offering special discounts until 13 October.

The Japan Matsuri returns to Trafalgar Square this Saturday 5 October. The event takes place from 11 am until 9 pm and celebrates Japanese culture with food stalls, music, dance, crafts, martial arts and children's activities. Full details at http://japanmatsuri.com/

The "Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art" exhibition at the British Museum runs from 3 October 2013 until 5 January 2014 and offers a rare opportunity to see erotic art by Hokusai and other Japanese artists in paintings and prints produced between 1600 and 1900. These sexually explicit works were banned from public exhibition for many years in Japan and for this exhibition there is a parental guidance warning for under 16s. Tickets cost £7. Booking and more information at http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/shunga.aspx

Cleeve Nursery garden centre, on the main A370 Bristol to Weston Super Mare road (about 30 mins drive from central Bristol), will hold a Japanese Weekend this Saturday and Sunday 6th and 7th April.

Highlights include 

• talks by the curator of Bristol Botanic Garden on his travels in Japan (3.00-4.00 pm Sat & Sun)
  
• martial arts demo by Somerset Budokai (2.00-2.30 pm Sat)
  
• activities for children including kabuto and chopstick games
• origami, bonsai, Japanese food and more

Some of us from BJC will be there, mainly on the Saturday. It's a free event and should be fun!

http://www.cleevenursery.co.uk/index.html

In the Tohoku region of northern Japan there's nothing unusual about a snowy winter. In fact, heavy snowfalls are very much the norm. Although I've never been much north of Sendai, I've experienced for myself the biting cold, the blizzards driving snow horizontally and the metre-deep lying snow of winter in Miyagi prefecture.

Further north, in Aomori prefecture, the winter conditions become more extreme. But this winter has seen snowfall way beyond the usual couple of metres, reaching a record-breaking 5.5 metres deep in some places south of Aomori city. In the video below, a BBC correspondent encounters a 77 year old resident shovelling snow from the roof of his house. Although he has lived all his life in Aomori, he has never seen this volume of snow before, saying it is at least twice as much as usual. Of course, unlike here in Britain, where an inch of snow brings everything to a halt, everyone seems to cope.

UPDATE: The video has been deleted from YouTube for copyright reasons. You can still see it on the BBC News Asia site here.

Since I posted a first look at Yume Kitchen's menu back in January they have updated and improved it, so here is the latest version.

Yume Kitchen is at 9 Cotham Hill, Bristol BS6 6LD.

Taiko Drummers

Mugenkyo, the UK's best-known and longest-established taiko drumming ensemble, rarely seem to play in the Bristol area. Their 10 year history of concerts throughout the UK, Europe and Japan, with tight playing and theatrical performances, makes them well worth going to see. There's no Bristol concert in their tour schedule at the moment but they will be performing at the Playhouse, Weston Super Mare on Friday 10 May 2013. 

And if you want to compare them with a Japanese taiko group, who are guaranteed to put on a spectacular show, the Yamato Drummers from Nara will be playing at the Bristol Hippodrome next Wednesday 27 February 2013.
 

Learning Japanese Online: keeping the cost down

JapanesePod 101, Busuu, Nihongo Master... these and many other Japanese language learning web sites are jostling to take your hard-earned cash from you in return for the promise of an easy way to learn the language. I've never got as far as paying for any of these but I've given some of them a free trial run. What I've noticed about all of them is that if you decide to take the plunge and pay for their services, it's best to have a strategy. They all offer a short period of free use initially. With some of them you can continue with a free account but what's available will be very limited. To get the full service, you have to pay. This is where the strategy comes in. They may offer you a discount on the full price at the end of the free trial period, but if you hesitate to take it up they will almost always follow this up with the offer of an even cheaper deal. Wait even longer and they may reduce this again and again.

The only problem with this kind of brinkmanship is that eventually the special offers stop and you're left with only the full price option. So how do you know when they have offered you the best price? The answer is to check the site out with a different identity. Give yourself a new name, set up an email account in that name and use it to try out the site. To cover your tracks even more effectively, use a different computer so your IP address is different too. Once you've discovered their marketing strategy, you can secure the best deal using your true identity. It may be a little sneaky, but it will definitely save you some money. Or maybe, like me, you'll decide that the best option of all is to use some of the many good free sites online instead.

You wait forever then two come along at once: as it is with buses, so it is with "Japanese Kitchens" in Bristol. Only a month or so after the arrival of Yume, Bristol's first Japanese Kitchen, comes Nomu, a new cocktail bar/lounge and Japanese Kitchen in Whiteladies Road. Culinary nomenclature aside, Nomu is a very different proposition from Yume though. As the name suggests, Nomu will be concentrating more on drinking than eating and the owner, Ken Wong, describes it as a cocktail bar lounge with a Japanese twist. He also told me that they have "a wonderful kitchen team who can make some fantastic Japanese food", so I'm looking forward to trying it. 

Nomu is due to open at 81 Whiteladies Road, Clifton officially on 1st March, after a "tester weekend" (invitation only) beginning this Friday.

In Japan, just as in Britain, poetry doesn't feature greatly in the best-selling book lists: to sell a few thousand copies of a poetry anthology is regarded as a major success. 
Toyo Shibata started her career as a poet at the age of 92 and her first book of poetry to be published, when she was nearing 100 years old, sold more than 1.5 million copies in Japan.
くじけないで (Kujikenaide, or "Don't Lose Heart") proved to be an inspiration to huge numbers of Japanese people. Here is a sample, translated into English:

“Don’t lose heart.

Oh, please don’t sigh that you are unhappy.

The sunshine and the breeze will not favour anyone.

Dreams can be dreamed equally.

I have seen hard times but I am glad that I am alive.

Don’t you ever lose heart, either.”

Toyo Shibata died today, 20 January 2013, at the age of 101. I was saddened to hear of her death, but her message is staying with me... くじけないで.