Kurashi - News From Japan

Seizo Suzuki was a rose breeder who, with his rare talent and incessant efforts, played a leading role in the rosedom of Japan. Due to his leadership that Japan's rosedom has come to enjoy the world-wide reputation it holds today. During his lifetime, he raised as many as 160 new rose varieties, and 30 of them were awarded the ARRS and other prizes at prestigious intenational competitions of new roses the world over, earning him the reputation as a great breeder globally. Heritage roses in Japan He was one of the breeders who recognised early on the importance of species roses and old garden roses as a gene pool for future breeding programmes. He collected about 2,000 such roses in his research institute of the Keisei Rose Nursery. This collection impressed Mr. Peter Harkness so strongly that he wrote in an article he contributed to the RNRS journal The Rose: "For quality of growth and richness of variety I have never seen its like. I could have stayed f...

The Damask rose is one of the oldest rose strains in the world, its virtues lauded since antiquity. Today it is mainly cultivated for its use in perfumes -- and in the Syrian village of Al Marah, the traditions for its cultivation have endured through the centuries. AFP: A total of 200,000 Damask roses, a variety known for its strong fragrance, will be used to create the fountain water, which visitors are free to scoop up and apply to their skin. The International Roses & Gardening Show 2013 will held from May 11-16 at the Seibu Dome in Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture. Admission 2,000. For more information, visit www.bara21.jp (J). Roses are tricky plants. Most of of just know the flowers, and we have no idea about how those gorgeous pink, red, or white blossoms appear. Behind the Scent has more. Half the fun of introducing a new fragrance family into our home fragrance collections is doing the research on the basic elements we combine. In our newest frag...

Maka Hannya Haramita Shingyo The Great Sutra of Profound Essential Wisdom and Beyond The Bodhisattva of true compassion, Through deep practice in Great Wisdom, Understands that the body and the five skandas are only emptiness. And with this understanding, he helps all who suffer. Oh Sariputra, Phenomena is no different than ku, ku no different from phenomena. Phenomena becomes ku, ku becomes phenomena. The five skandas too are only phenomena. Oh Sariputra, All things are ku. There is no birth, no death, No purity, no impurity, No increase, no decrease. This is why in ku there is no form, no skandas, No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. There is no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no thought. There is no knowing, no ignorance, no illusion, no cessation of illusion. No withering, no death, no end to withering and death. There is no beginning to suffering, no end to suffering. There is no knowledge, no profit, no non-profit. Because ...

If you like herbs, and if you like gardens, do pay a visit to the Seikatsu no Ki Herb Garden in Hanno, Saitama... Nice shop, cafe, medial herbs, natural healing garden, special Sri Lanka treatments, aroma therapy, Ayusha, Ayurveda products, and a lot more. The Hanno garden itself is a work of art, you walk up through roses and all kinds of flowers, a tiered theme park, with so much fragrance to enjoy... Each month has new surprises... A very special place. The medical garden tour in Hanno is just 1050 yen plus your lunch... The Tree of Life company stretches around the globe, talking to the staff, I got some sense of how they got so big! I like how they do both seminars in the city and guided trips in the forest. Founded in the early 1960s, some 50 years ago, this is a company that has grown to have 100 shops all over Japan. Never heard of Tree of Life? You are missing out. Do visit Hanno and the unique herb garden, really, it is a small park, and you will not be disappoi...

Koma, a small town in rural Saitama, Japan has an amazing story to tell, and if you visit the small Koma Shinto shrine , you will be told that this tiny hamlet was the place where a bunch of survivors from a war on what is now the Korean peninsula - I have no idea what it may have been known as back then - some 1300 years ago. People escaped from all the way across the ocean, and ended up safely, here? In fact, even today, people are confused about what to call that Korean region. Even more seriously, Communist China appears to try to claim large parts of the region (which is now to the north of North Korea, if I understand things correctly). Here is what Koma, Saitama looks like today , while the wikipedia entry for "Koma" redirects to Goryeo, the ancient Korean kingdom from 918–1392. Ken has this to add: This shrine is also very old and was founded about one thousand and two hundreds years ago. It is said that the prince, Jakkou, of the ancient Korean dynast...

The Hamaoka Nuclear Plant near Tokyo is in the news again, with The Mainichi reporting that anti-reactor restart mayors have been victorious in nearby towns. Glad to hear that. Best of luck to the campaigners in Shizuoka prefecture who have fought so hard for so long against this particular nuclear folly. Check Hamaoka here on Kurashi and it is probably the one nuclear plant I have blogged about most often over the years... Municipal elections delivered wins on April 21 for two incumbent mayors against the restart of the nearby Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station, joining two other cities in the region against reactivating the plant's reactors. Mayoral elections were held in the cities of Iwata, Kakegawa and Fukuroi, and anti-restart incumbents in the latter two were returned to office. The mayors of nearby cities Kikugawa and Yaizu have also declared they "will not recognize" any move by plant operator Chubu Electric Power Co. to restart t...

I don't fly much these days, I feel I have more or less used up my miles when I was younger, and thinking about the planet, we all ought to travel more climate-friendly (and travel less). Be that as it may, there is also something subconscious about flying - I dream about hovering, levitating, using nothing at all to be air-borne. Might have something to do with watching Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, 25 years ago? Remember all those hover skateboards escapes and cool cars that didn't need any roads? Or how about Kiki's Delivery Service , a wonderful Ghibli feature from 1989, set mostly in the imaginary skies over Visby, Gotland, a small island in Sweden. Kiki battles her reluctant broom as she saves the day. I like how they used that airplane in the beginning, a  Handley Page , only a handful were built in the UK. G-AAUD, production number 42/3, was named after the Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Navigator , who explored the Atlantic coast of Africa in approx....