Japan And Her Parks Of Nature
One of the most beautiful East Asian countries in the world is Japan, with her numerous attractions and natural sights that includes volcanic mountains, parks, gardens, lakes and scenic islands. They provide a perfect balance of urban charm and seductive nature, and the locations that illustrate this the best way are her parks. Some can be found in the modern cities that are the focal point of busy Japan, while others flourish in Mother Nature with quaint little towns and villages.
Many first time visitors to Japan will make it a point to travel to at least one of the numerous national parks within the country. In the hectic times that we all face nowadays, many of us enjoy traveling to places far and wide all over the world that offer a temporary escape from our busy lives. What could be better to provide that avenue than taking trips to the gorgeous Japanese gardens and parks that have Eastern and Western flavors all mixed together?
There are a total of 29 national parks in Japan which occupy more than five per cent of the total land area in the country. While locals are an ever present in terms of visitors, there is an increasing number of foreign tourists who are eager to have a taste of what the nature of Japan has to offer. Some of the most popular parks are the Nikko, Shiretoko and Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Parks.
Nikko National Park is guarded by the small city of Nikko, which houses a small population. However, there are countless visitors who pay the area a visit because of their desire to experience its beautiful surroundings. From the serene and tranquil Lake Chuzenji to the majestic Mount Nantai, the park reaches far and wide over a total of four prefectures. Even visitors on a budget Nikko National Park day tour would be able to enjoy other highlights that include the large Kegon waterfall as well as the Toshogu shrine that has become a recognizable landmark for the city itself.
Mount Fuji is often considered the finest icon of nature Japan. However, the area in which it is found has an understated elegance of its own - the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. The park is even greater in area when compared to the park in Nikko, and it is no wonder considering Mount Fuji and the Fuji Five Lakes make up part of it. The region even has tiny islets within it, which is why many feel that it is unofficially the largest park in Japan.
Perhaps one of the most understated parks in Japan is Shiretoko National Park. It is a true natural haven untouched in the most part by civilization or commercialization. In fact, there is no way one can get there on wheels. There is also diverse wildlife that cannot be found elsewhere in Japan, while the flora and fauna existing within Shiretoko had prompted UNESCO to mark the area as a World Heritage Site, a great achievement for a humble site in a modern country.
Whether it be an adventure to the wilderness in Shiretoko, an experience with national symbols in Fuji-Hakone-Izu or visiting Nikko National Park on a tour package, Japan’s national parks have so much to offer for the eager and willing traveler. One will never cease to be amazed by a country that has an advanced and modern metropolis in its city centre of Tokyo, while surrounded by such extensive and beautiful nature.
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Learn About Japanese Culture and How Light Is Made In Ancient Time
“We may simply have lost our appreciation of hand-crafted goods.” Igarashi san has been making chochin paper lanterns in his little shop for his full life. His father too, and his grandfatherand great granddad and even great, great granddad. The tools & plant that surround him today, in fact, have outlasted his ancestors, their wooden surfaces worn smooth with age. Since the start of the Meiji age ( 1868 – 1912 ) Kanazawa citizens have been buying Igarashi chochin from the store, in the guts of old Kanazawa’s merchant district, close to the back of the castle. The shelves are stacked high with beautifully decorated lanterns – colourful spurts of colour peppering the dusty confines of the small workshop.
Chochin lanterns have a reasonably long history in Japan – there is evidence of them being employed in churches in the 10th century – and were used basically as a movable method of lighting. Only occasionally used inside, they usually hung outside a home, temple or business or else in the entrance, prepared to be suspended on a pole and carried before anybody going out at night. Igarashi-san reckons that at a previous point they were so commonly used there would have been been around forty or 50 chochin shops just in Kanazawa. These days there remain only himself and one other local craftsman in the trade and the other fellow (Matsuda-san) has long since diversified, making traditional umbrellas his mainstay.
Making a chochin is a fiddly, fairly delicate procedure despite the attractively the attractively straightforward appearance of the end product. And, when asked what are the most important qualities in his profession Igarashi-san replies, his bright eyes dead serious, “patience and concentration.” The average sized lantern according to Igarashi-san, at roughly thirty cm across, can be produced at a rate of about two a day by one man including most of the painting. However some actually huge ones have left the Igarashi shop over the years – his biggest was a matsuri monster measuring five shaku (1 shaku = 30.3cm in the old Eastern measuring system) in diameter with a complicated year of the rabbit design on it. The old lantern maker is pragmatic about the fact that people want cheaper, mass-produced, plastic covered lanterns today – he even sells them himself – but he is assured in the certainty that a well-made paper lantern is a nice thing, superior in a number of ways to these garish modern impostors.
“You can correct a good chochin,” he tells us, “you can replace one rib or fix a hole in the paper no problem.” “Plastic lanterns have no internal frame and can not be patched.” A paper lantern regardless of how well made lasts only about a year ( natural beauty is always fleeting ) while a plastic one might last twice that and cost half as much. On top of that, we as a society may have simply lost our appreciation for handmade goods. Price has become our main motivation as customers. We don’t care to grasp how things were made these days, or who made them, or else Igarashisan would be the prosperous head of a chain of shops.
The walls of the Igarashi Chochinya and his ready-to-hand scrapbook sport innumerable monochrome photographs and press clippings showing a proud, broad-shouldered young man with strong, thick arms and a fetching grin showing off elegant paper spheres with matsuri lights glimmering in the background. Humbly showing us them, his warm, friendly grin only slips slightly as he tells us that he will be the last of his family line making lanterns here.
If you enjoy traveling and would like to read more on some of the most famous places in the world, visit famouswonders.com and also check out Akashi Kaikyo Bridge facts.