From a good luck charm for children to a talisman for sexual potency and childbirth, the daruma has been many things to many people throughout history.
It's peak season at Arai Daruma, a small traditional shop in Hiratsuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture. Beginning with the shop owner, they are busy making daruma dolls...
Traditional Japanese daruma dolls seek good luck and success. These daruma, made in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, pray for peace dressed in the colors of Ukraine.
Katsuō-ji itself is cloaked in the northern mountains that rise from Ōsaka’s Minō district, and it's one of the oldest temples in Japan to discover the...
~JAPAN Forward reached new milestones in monthly and daily readership in 2020. We invite you to find what attracted readers to our most popular articles of the year,...
There is a shop in Hiratsuka City, Kanagawa, that is bustling with activity these days. Arai Darumaya is the kind of shop that you would...
Except for the uninitiated, most everyone in Japan will know that daruma is normally a papier maché good luck doll, often about the size of...
Happy New Year from JAPAN Forward! One week into 2019, we are sharing with you in a series the 25 most-read articles of the past 12...
Krispy Kreme’s Japan branches have really been delivering when it comes to seasonally appropriate doughnuts. Spring, Christmas, Halloween, they’ve got it covered, and as the biggest...
Most people living in Tokyo rarely have a chance to go to Hiratsuka - a city in the outskirts of the metropolis -...