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Looking again at something I grew up with This summer was a hot one. It was hot in Switzerland, and it was hot in Japan too. For me, it was also a summer with a lot to think about. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I found myself looking at something very ordinary: a noren. I took this photograph simply because I liked the way the light fell across the fabric, and how softly it moved in the air. Growing up in Japan, noren were never something I thought very much about. The

A small sound from Japanese summer — and what it makes us notice There is a sound that, for me, belongs unmistakably to a Japanese summer. Chirin.チリン。ちりん。 The small, clear note of a furin moving in the breeze. Growing up in Japan, I don’t remember wondering why we associated this sound with summer, or why it somehow seemed to make a hot day feel a little cooler. It was simply there. Like cicadas, sudare, cold noodles, or the particular brightness of a Japanese summer afternoo

What two mizuhiki knots can say without a single word In Japan, sometimes a gift begins speaking before you open it. Not through the wrapping paper. Not through the card. Through the knot. At first glance, the red and white cords tied around a Japanese gift may simply look decorative. But the way those cords are tied can carry a message of its own. One knot says: May this happiness come again. Another says: May this happen only once. The difference can be just a knot. A Knot

What a very hot European summer made me notice again about Japanese summer Now that the evenings are cooler again, it is strange to think back to just how hot this summer felt. There were weeks in Switzerland when the heat seemed to stay inside the buildings long after the sun had gone down. I live in an older building without built-in air conditioning, and on some nights the apartment simply didn’t seem to cool. So I bought a portable air conditioner. Then began a small summ

A Morning of Quiet Focus By the time morning light reached the table, its surface was already scattered with the makings of something delicate — cords in red, gold, teal, and lilac, instruction sheets in Japanese and English, scissors, tiny shaping tools. a quiet reminder that what we were about to do was rooted in something far older than any of us. This was the setting for msubi's Mizuhiki Omamori Charm Workshop — a day devoted to one of Japan's most understated crafts. Wh