NOTEBOOK — Arts Culture Tourism from Tokyo

The International Red Cross is planning to use AI developed in Japan to speed up landmine in parts of Ukraine. A team of Japanese scientists has said that it’s managed to built an original optical quantum computer. Japan has moved to the knockout stage of the FIFA Women's World Cup by defeating Costa Rica 2-0. And, the intense summer heat is expected to continue until October, according to a new three-month forecast by the Japan Meteorological Agency. With temperatures reaching a peak my the mid to late July, the back streets of Kagurazaka with its French community come alive between July 26 and July 29 during the Kagurazaka Matsuri, a summer festival east of Shinjuku and visit RootK Contemporary Gallery for their exhibition "Public Visuals".

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Renowned Japanese author Seiichi Morimura, known for works including the novel "Ningen no Shomei" (Proof of the Man) and his nonfiction work "Akuma no Hoshoku" (The Devil's Gluttony), has died of pneumonia at a hospital in Tokyo aged 90. The head of a man found dead in a Sapporo hotel earlier this month has been recovered from the home of a doctor who was arrested along with his daughter on suspicion of murder. And a giant maze made from 50,000 sunflowers has opened in the city of Tendo, Yamagata Prefecture north of Tokyo. Meanwhile, the 57th Katsushika Noryo hanabi taikai, or fireworks festival, returned to the east of Tokyo for the first time in 4 years. Notebook visited and looked on as people clung to lampposts clambering to catch sight of the sky filling with explosions, one deafening boom at a time.

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Recent research shows the Japanese consumer will see the cost of over 30,000 food and drink items go up in price by October as retailers seek to protect profits. Hyper Japan Festival 2023 showcased Japanese culture in London last Friday, attracting upward of 30,000 people. A government survey last Friday showed a marked increase in the number of working women in Japan with a record 30.35 million in 2022, compared with 1.22 million five years ago. In Osaka, news is less promising as a delay in constructing foreign pavilions at the 2025 Osaka Kansai Expo site is casting an unsettling shadow over the event with spiraling costs and controversial appointments. Amid soaring temperatures and unpredictable weather both here and abroad, local weather experts recently called an end to the country’s annual rainy season which usually runs through June and early July. NOTEBOOK escaped the worst of the sun for the welcome seclusion of "Nominoichi", an old coffee shop (or coffee-tei) in Ikebukuro.

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The Japanese government estimates the visitors between January and June exceeded 10 million, 21-times the number from the year before. This rebound saw international travelers return to Haneda Airport's Terminal 2 on Wednesday, following its three-year closure due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, Japan's prestigious Akutagawa Prize for Literature has been awarded for the very first time to a disabled author with Saou Ichikawa picking up the top prize. Across town and one of the largest festivals of the year took place at Yasukuni Jinja (Shrine) opposite Kitanomaru Koen, a national park also home to many of museums. Yasukuni and park are a short walk from the Imperial Palace which also descends into darkness as night falls while an exhibition by the New York based artist Tyler Cobern across town at Fig. in Otsuka centers around ideas of actual and spiritual darkness. Notebook visits Yasukuni late one afternoon and listens to the sound of summer and the few people there soaking up the sun.

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A parade of yamahoko floats passed through Kyoto on Monday during the city’s annual Gion Festival, held in all its glory for the first time in almost four years. Meanwhile, a man died after being run over by a dashi float on Saturday at the Hakata Gion Yamakasa summer festival being held in the city of Fukuoka, southwest Japan. Temperatures over the weekend soared, reaching almost 35 degrees Celsius in more than 150 different parts of Japan, with temperatures in one city reaching almost 40. And Saturday marked the 40th anniversary of the iconic Family Computer or Famicom, produced by Japanese video game maker Nintendo. With last weekend widely acknowledged to be the start of summer, with Gion matsuri in Kyoto, Matama matsuri at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine and others this July, Notebook caught one bon odori dance and the sound of Japanese fencing, also known as kendo. 

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Today is Marine day in Japan, a national holiday, and with that Notebook is taking a break and will return on Wednesday. In the meantime, we revisit last Friday's episode (07/14) visiting Nihonbashi to catch a glimpse of work by painter David Hockney in the run up to a major exhibition in the Capitol. All this prior to the Bon festival season in Tokyo and Gion festival season in Kyoto which both began last Saturday, as Kyoto filled with people and a flotilla of lanterns during the Gion festival's Yoiyama event in the city.

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The current Chief Executive of Hong Kong has said that it will ban the import of Japanese seafood should treated water from the disaster-crippled nuclear power plant in Fukushima be released into the ocean. In Japan, so-called ‘Search Funds’ are helping entrepreneurs restart aging businesses. And the legendary manga artist Kazuo Umezz has been reunited with works drawn as a teenager and thought lost, years before making his manga-ka debut. And with wind chimes dotted throughout Nihonbashi for the “Eco-Edo Nihonbashi” project that runs until September, current art exhibitions like “Interconnection” at Mitsukoshi Contemporary Gallery and 'joiner' photo prints by David Hockney at Nishimura Gallery, opening this weekend alongside the David Hockney retrospective at Tokyo's MOT Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, it is the iconic Nihonbashi Bridge which joins past with present from old Edo to present-day Tokyo.

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The heavy rain which lashed northern Kyushu, south west Japan, caused the automaker Toyota to pause operations Monday at three of its factories. That same day, temperatures reached 36.2 degrees in Central Tokyo, the first time it has exceeded 35 degrees this year, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The weather even caused one ceiling painting at Sensō-ji in Asakusa to peel away over the weekend. Perhaps feeling the heat was one man who fell victim of a bar in Shimbashi that defrauded him and his credit card of almost 700,000 JPY or nearly 5,000 USD. One very expensive night out. And in the run-up to the Bon holiday season we revisit several of our interviews with key creatives in the Capitol.

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Concerns in Japan are growing over a possible resurgence of coronavirus cases this summer. Suspicious objects were discovered by police as people observed a minute's silence where the former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated one year ago on July 8th. A three-day festival of Japanese culture began on Friday in Sao Paulo, attracting cosplayers and members of Brazil's Japanese nikkei-jin community. Meanwhile, Access Tohoku, a store selling popular food and other items from Japan's Tohoku region, is set to open in Singapore on July 19th. As this week builds up to the first of several O’bon festivals in the capital, we revisit one from last year in Tokyo’s Toshima ward and listen to the Bon odori dance in full-swing.

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Notebook reaches 200 episodes! The system logging traffic coming in and going out of the central Japanese Port of Nagoya was hit by a ransomware attack on Tuesday, by the Russia-based hacker group LockBit. The International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA opened an office at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Wednesday monitoring the safe discharge of treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. A river running Ikoma in Nara prefecture turned a bright green this week. And police arrested a 35-year-old man for stealing 1,500 Pokemon trading cards worth 1.15 million JPY (8,000 USD) from a store in Akihabara. With today marking 200 episodes of Notebook and the start of this summer’s Tanabata (or Star) Festival, we scan the art events happening this weekend — from Tokyo Gendai in Yokohama, to Tennozu Artweek at WHAT Museum, even Koji Nakano at XYZ Collective — and visit Kishimojin temple in Zoshigaya and its summer festival happening this weekend.

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