I had long heard of the only desert in Japan in Tottori Prefecture. I decided to drive up there this week and give it a look. It`s no desert. It is a giant hill of natural sand by the seashore. Apparently not actually dry enough to be a desert, they call the area sand dunes. [...]

One of the annual summer events in my rural Japanese neighborhood is soumen nagashi. Long pieces of bamboo are split in half to make a long slide down the back of pick up truck. Then cooked noodles, soumen, are dropped down the slide and all the neighborhood folks try to catch the noodles with chopsticks [...]

Most Japanese people are cremated and their bones are removed from the ash with chopsticks by close family members and placed in an urn. There is a compartment for the urn under the family tombstone. Often there is one grave stone for a whole family with many urns placed under it. There are also places [...]

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Join the forum discussion on this post. This is a ganguro girl. Used to be a popular style in Japan. I wonder if sticking your head in a microwave can give you a tan like that. Check out way worse tans: http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/curiosities/2009/badtans.htm