Nature-lovers, you might have caught a story in last week’s Asahi Shimbun about a rare and unusual kind of bee to be found buzzing around Japan, and in particular at the Aso Highland Museum Park, in Kumamoto prefecture.

Though the article seemed to downplay the chances of finding any, we decided to make the trip up into the highlands to the museum anyway, as it lies at the foot of Mount Aso, which is always worth trip, bees or no bees.

Dotted around the museum’s garden, there were patches of flowering basil, and busily buzzing around these bushes were hundreds of insects - including some blue and black striped bees.

As I crouched next to the plant, waiting for an opportune moment to take a snap, with the bees buzzing around my head, it struck how quiet they were. In fact they were barely buzzing at all. Occasionally one would stop and hover in front of my face, as if it were checking me out. This made them seem very friendly, though I may just have been caught up in the moment.

More photos of the unmistakeable blueness can be seen here.

When Westerners first began to visit Japan in the mid-1500s they were struck by the refined beauty and quality of the country’s arts and crafts. It was a kind of beauty and quality that they had never seen before.

This special quality of Japanese things was so commonplace that the Japanese themselves did not consider it unusual. Everything they made, including simple household utensils, had the same quality.

Japan’s traditional arts and crafts owed their special character to a merging of cosmic and Shinto concepts of harmony, sensuality and spirituality — ­a cultural factor that remains very much in evidence and in force among Japanese artists and craftsmen in present-day Japan.

The Shinto concept of harmony included the size and shape of things, how they were to be used, and their relationship with people. The spiritual element in Japanese things incorporated the essence and spirit of the materials used, and was based on both respecting and revering these inherent qualities.

The sensual element in Japanese arts and crafts was reflected by the things that people automatically find attractive ­harmony in shape, in size, in the relationship of the parts, in the interaction of colors, in their feel when touched, and in the vibrations they project.

After generations of refining their designs and techniques, Japan’s master artists and craftsmen achieved a kind and quality of beauty that transcended the obvious surface manifestations of their materials ­a kind of beauty that was described as yugen , meaning “mystery” or “subtlety.”

Quoting from my book The Elements of Japanese Design:

Yugen beauty referred to a type of attractiveness ­ beneath the surface of the material but in delicate harmony with it ­ that registers on the conscious as well as the subconscious of the viewer. It radiates a kind of spiritual essence.

The skill and techniques that were going into Japan’s arts and crafts by the 10th century became so deeply embedded in the culture that they were not distinguished from daily life, and were reflected in everything the Japanese did, from designing and building castles, gardens, homes and palaces to the creation of hand-made paper.

Despite the mostly Western façade that today’s Japan presents to the world yugen beauty is still very much in evidence in the arts and crafts, in traditional restaurants, inns, shops, wearing apparel and elsewhere in many unexpected places.

Yugen is another Japanese word I recommend that other people learn and use because it clearly identifies a concept that in other languages requires several sentences to explain­and in itself is an example of the traditional Japanese propensity to refine things down to their essence.

This compulsive reduction tendency of the Japanese is also dramatically demonstrated in their ability to design and manufacture miniaturized hi-tech products and in using nanotechnology to create new processes and new materials.

For a definitive look at the Japanese view and creation of yugen beauty, see Elements of Japanese Design - Key Terms for Understanding & Using Japan’s Classic Wabi-Sabi-Shibui Concepts.

AskMen.com writes in to alert us to the results of their survey Top 10: Japanese Models, which focuses on Japanese “gravure idols.”

Other AskMen.com links that may be of interest are their Top 10: Playboy Japan Centerfolds and their Celebrity Profiles.

From the flower loving remora comes a link to an article highlighting the 20,000 hitsuji (moss phlox) plants that bloom at Hitsujiyama Park in Chichibu, west of Tokyo each spring.

Here’s a little avant-garde weirdness from Tokyo Design Festa.

She’s from Taiwan and was one of the performers at the Design Festa - vid coming up soon on that!

Music by SevenCycleTheory

Reigandou is in a forest on a secluded hillside just outside Kumamoto city centre.

Also known as Musashi’s Cave, it’s the spot that legendary swordsman Musashi Miyamoto retreated to in the final years of his life, to write Go Rin No Sho (’The Book of Five Rings’).

These days it’s something of a pilgrimage destination.

The path to Musashi’s cave is long, and the mountainside along the route is dotted with ‘500 Buddhas’. On a sunny spring day, in a silence punctuated only by the buzzing of insects, it’s quite a sight.

A longtime Japundit reader alerted me to an important beauty treatment now available at New York’s Shizuka salon, a place I went to once in search of a Japanese-style manicure.

a high-end Japanese spa in midtown, has just introduced a new “Geisha Facial,” which promises to cleanse, brighten, and exfoliate a patron’s face—thanks to a secret ingredient: bird poop. For centuries in Japan, both Kabuki actors and geishas used uguisu no fun, or nightingale droppings, to clean off their thick white makeup and soothe their faces; apparently, guanine, found in the droppings, helped their complexions.

Hopefully the bird droppings are not collected from the upper reaches of Hokkaido.

Vanity, after all, can make you sick.

Spam emailers have discovered that eating seaweed can miraculously rid women between the ages of 25 and 54 of the roll of fat around their middlesection.

Just take a couple of sea-weed tablets every day, and perhaps you too will see your weight plummet, so you too can join the ranks of women who enjoy the lowest rate of obesity in the world!

Personally, I’ll stick to weekly misoshiru and some nice sunomono with wakame.

Uguisu photo via.

May Day in Kyoto not only involves a parade honoring International Worker’s Day, but also marks the opening of verandas in restaurants in Pontocho along the Kamogawa River.

A pair of maiko (apprentice geisha) shoes at the entrance of a Pontocho restaurant.

The restaurant where I ate had a little screen separating our area from the veranda next door. When I looked over, I spotted a camera crew setting up equipment. A little later, it became clear why the cameras were there.

A little breeze hit the screen, and in the opening, I could see a smiling maiko.

I’m pretty sure this was some kind of news crew documenting the start of the May and the opening of the verandas, which will be accessible till September 30th.

May is also the start of the Pontocho geiko dances at the Kaburencho.

Someone managed to catch a snippet of the dances last year, and upload it onto Youtube.

We also enjoyed some tea, made by a maiko.

Japan’s oldest “modern” robot — the 10-foot, 6-inch GakuTenSoku — has been awakened in Japan. Gone are the inflatable rubber tubes of the original 1928 android build by biologist Makoto Nishimura. The bot now tilts its head, moves his eyes, smiles, and puffs out his cheeks thanks to a $200,000, computer-controlled, pneumatic-servo makeover. While nothing compared to his modern offspring, GakuTenSoku still manages to creep us the hell out. On display at the renovated Osaka Science Museum starting July 18th.

japanese robot nostalgia from engadget.

If you thought that hanami season finished when the last of the cherry blossoms fell, think again. Even though Japan’s most famous blossoms are gone for another year, there are still chances to enjoy a hanami picnic before the sultry heat of summer kicks in.

Following signs off the beaten track to the Hiyoshi shrine in Tamana, Kumamoto prefecture, we found the Yamada wisteria (山田藤). The many vines, some of them reputedly over 200 years old, form a canopy over the shrine’s grounds - a pergola in purple.

Golden Week is a perfect time to see it, occuring as it does right around the start of wisteria’s flowering season, and I’d imagine that that has contributed to the Yamada wisteria’s huge popularity.

The lawns under the fragrant flowers were packed with picnicking folk, enjoying an al fresco lunch on blue sheets.

Something to relax by this weekend.

Which of the following photos is of real maiko, and which is of fakers?

Photo A.

Photo B.

Answer after the jump. Please do post your response. (No cheating).

Not the most interesting flight path. As a result, I wasn’t glued to the window, avoiding sleep. We didn’t fly into Narita this time, but to Osaka, which meant that there was a good chance of spotting Mt. Fuji, provided there wasn’t too much cloud cover. About an hour before landing, this was the view from the plane.

I used to think that the Starbucks tumbler in the middle of this photo was a flight of fancy. Yes, of course Japan is full of cherry blossoms in the spring and yes of course the sky is a shade of blue. But the contrast couldn’t possibly be this extreme.

And then I saw this.

Steve Levenstein writes in to alert us to a new article he has written about Japanese beauty products made from the placentas of pigs and other creatures.

Sakura - Japanese Cherry Blossoms have been a part of Japanese culture for over a thousand years. They’re the subject of countless poems from waka to haiku.

The Short Happy Life of the Cherry Blossom

This is a photo montage I actually put up a year ago but never made public. It contains shots that I have taken over the years in different locations of sakura. You’ll see scenes from Tokyo, Kyoto, Kamakura, Himeji and few places you may not be aware of such as Ofuna and it’s giant Kannon statue. I put in a few Japanese poems to go along with the photos.

The geisha are from the Miyako Odori which is an annual geisha pulbic dance performance in Gion.

Music by The Secret Commonwealth

In winter mild-mannered conifers become hulking monstrosities of snow and ice

Strangely-shaped trees called Juhyo (monster trees) lurk on Mount Zao.

They’re out there lurking in the dark, in the desolate wilderness of winter — the beautiful and eerie offspring of Yuki Onna, the Japanese snow woman spirit. They are the Juhyo, or monster trees. Every winter the trees of Mount Zao in the Yamagata Prefecture undergo a shocking transformation. From mild-mannered conifers, these trees become hulking monstrosities of snow and ice.

Heading up to the summit and the land of the Juhyo.

What makes the trees into monsters is a wintery cocktail of snow and ice shaken and stirred by a blustery freezing Siberian wind. The snow and ice cakes the conifer trees so completely that often the original shape of the tree is so distorted that’s it unrecognizable as such.

To the Japanese, trees in Japan often have a spiritual nature. At many Shinto shrines, trees are venerated as having a kami or type of spirit. One type of spirit is a kodama and it is believed that to cut down a tree containing such a spirit will bring about bad luck, so they are marked off with sacred rope. As with many spirits in Japan, these tree spirits can be beneficial, dangerous or neutral.

Juhyo Kogen - Monster Tree Plateau.

In rural areas, it was thought that if trees reached a thousand years of age, they could come alive, particularly at night, and some were quite dangerous. Woodcutters out after dark had to be extra cautious of running afoul of these creatures.

Me and the Juhyo.

Fortunately for visitors, the Juhyo monster trees are apparently dormant, content to stand still showing off their weird and beautiful shapes. In this respect the Juhyo resemble the snow spirit Yuki Onna. Yuki Onna is the female personification of winter in Japan. On one hand she represents the haunting beauty of snow and ice in her form as a beautiful pale woman with red lips and black hair.

On the other hand she represents winter’s deadlier side as she would freeze her hapless victims to death with her breath or she would lead them astray so they would perish in the wilderness. Like Yuki Onna, the Juhyo are beautiful in their odd way but they serve to remind viewers of the fate that awaits anyone who stays too long out in winter’s domain.

While the monster trees may be docile, the weather is not. Visitors may either encounter perfect weather with sunny clear blue skies in which to view the Juhyo or face freezing cold winds and such thick fog that they can barely see past their nose.

A Christmas tree gone over to the Dark Side.

I had the misfortune of it being a day with weather of the latter sort. The monster trees were practically swallowed by the swirling white mist. The main path was closed off to keep visitors from getting lost and becoming monster trees on their own. Luckily for us monster-hunters, there was a sizable herd of Juhyo next to the visitor center.

During the day — if you could even call it day — the wind was fierce. My face, feet and hands kept freezing while my glasses kept fogging up. It took quite a bit of hot sake back at the center to get the warmth back into my cold bones.

A dinosaur tree?

In the evening, the monster trees really come to life when the visitor center illuminates them with an array of multi-colored lights. At this time the trees really take on the shape of things unearthly. To me, the Juhyo don’t resemble monsters as much as they do the terrain of some alien landscape on another planet.

The Juhyo look like the bizarre terrain of an alien landscape.

The Juhyo are atop Mount Zao in the northern prefecture of Yamagata. Zao, like many mountains, is actually a volcano and an active one at that. The Juhyo can be seen at Zao Onsen, which is reachable, by bus from Yamagata City station. Take the cable car of the Zao Ropeway to the midway point and get on the Sanroku Line, which goes to the top to the Juhyo-kogen: Monster Tree Plateau. The Juhyo exist from mid-January to mid-March depending on current weather conditions.

Juhyo Godzilla

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I think nose jobs are the most popular procedure in the States, but in Japan, it seems to be all about the eyes (and teeth).

I had no idea about Kimura Takuya . . .

In today’s installment of mysterious Japanese beauty secrets that might or might not work, you will perhaps be somewhat surprised to learn that Oscar winning actress Cate Blanchett has placed the fate of her porcelain skin in hands covered with sake.

She says, “They discovered that little old women who were working in the sake dough, I guess it’s called, their hands were as smooth as babies.” Pregnant Blanchett is such a big fan of the SK-II beauty masks, she slips one on every morning, while she’s making sandwiches for her children’s dinner. She explains, “I have a little ritual in the morning and in the evening; I’ll do a mask while I’m making their sandwiches… It’s that easy to do.”

Perhaps all along it has been sake that has helped Japanese women stay so young looking.

Presumably, the body beautiful is not included.