The Miniature Appeal of Netsuke  (03:51)
Most Japanese have a small ornament hanging from their cellphone strap. This modern trend is in fact an old tradition, originating in 17th century netsuke - tiny toggles used to secure pouches or boxes to kimono sashes. At first these were functional objects, necessary to carry items on a pocketless kimono, but custom designs became fashionable and antique netsuke are highly valued for their artistic beauty. Modern netsuke designers continue to find new uses for this old idea.

Nature's Beauty at Lake Akan  (03:51)
Lake Akan, in eastern Hokkaido, is a beautiful lake set among mountains and primeval forest that has become a popular year-round leisure destination. One unusual pastime is to sit in tents to fish through holes in the ice when the lake freezes in winter. This also the home of unusual green spheres of algae called marimo. Formed by the rare conditions in the lake, marimo found here are larger than anywhere else in the world. A festival at the lakeside town features songs and dances in praise of nature by the local Ainu people.

Wazuma - Japanese Traditional Magic  (03:43)
Japanese stage magic is possibly one of the oldest in the world, originating as far back as the 8th century and with manuals of techniques surviving from 300 years ago. Old woodblock prints show wazuma magicians performing the same tricks you can see on stage today - illusions using traditional Japanese items such as washi paper, folding fans and of course, gorgeous kimonos. Most spectacular is the mizugei, where performers dexterously manipulate spouting columns of water.

Unfolding the story of the kyo-sensu  (04:23)
The first folding fans were made in Kyoto (the kyo in kyo-sensu) about 1,200 years ago, much later spreading to China and then, via the Silk Road, to Europe. The Japanese, living in a country with long hot summers, quickly adopted this new design that allowed fans to be carried so conveniently when not in use. Over the centuries, craftsmen created a tradition of beauty in the making of their bamboo frames and hand-painted washi paper that lives on today in Japan, both in everyday life and in high culture.

Matsuri-zushi — festival sushi  (03:40)
Sushi is world famous, but the kind of sushi known overseas is just one of many that are eaten inside Japan. Matsuri-zushi is a term describing sushi eaten at festivals and celebrations, and even this comes in many varieties, made using different local ingredients and methods. We look at two famous regional styles — Okayama's extravagant  bara-zushi, and Chiba's futomaki-zushi, featuring intricate designs that combine several layers of seaweed-wrapped rolls.

Iriomote's Shichi Festival  (03:42)
Iriomote is a subtropical, mangrove-covered island at Japan's southernmost tip, known for its rare wildlife, beautiful scenery and distinctive local culture. The Shichi Festival, unique to a small western part of Iriomote, is a harvest festival with a history going back several centuries. It features a masked man representing Miriku, god of happiness, who leads the villagers in a parade to the seashore where they dance as boats are rowed out to greet blessings sent from over the sea by the harvest god.

Funadansu Sea Chests  (03:40)
Being an island nation where it was always easier to transport goods by water, Japan has a long and proud seafaring tradition. Back in the days of sail, no other country developed such sophisticated techniques for making beautiful, sturdy sea chests to protect valuables and documents. With secret compartments and cunning locks, precisely designed to be watertight and floatable, beautifully decorated old funadansu are sought-after collectors items and there is still a demand for new chests, hand-made using traditional techniques.

Sweet Accessories  (03:24)
Right at this moment, there's a new trend sweeping the streets of Japan. Like women everywhere, Japanese women delight in sweet desserts and in fashion accessories, and now they've found a way to combine these two passions. On rings, pendants, cell phone straps, bracelets - the trend today is to wear tiny accessories that are perfect replicas of your favorite sweets. Top brands are even sold in stores resembling upscale confectionary boutiques.

Yamaga Lantern Festival  (03:52)
In one of Japan's oldest and best-known fire festivals, a parade of blazing pine torches commemorates a legendary imperial visit to Yamaga. This venerable Kyushu merchant town has a unique 500-year old tradition of making lanterns out of washi craft paper, and the highlight of the festival is the sight of 1,000 dancers circling in the slow Sen-nin Toro  Odori, illuminated by the gentle flickering glow of the paper lanterns they wear on their heads. The procession ends with the offering of the lanterns at ancient Omiya Shrine.

Wagakki – Ancient Japanese Musical Instruments  (04:18)
When the Japanese adopted the ancient Chinese court music tradition called gagaku, they also imported a complete orchestra of musical instruments. These were the ancestors of instruments still played today, such as the 13-stringed koto harp, the shakuhachi bamboo flute and the three-stringed shamisen lute. Over many centuries, Japanese musicians not only modified the instruments, they also evolved a unique variation on the pentatonic scale used everywhere else, giving this music a sound only heard in Japan.

Dancing the Summer Nights Away  (03:51)
Gujo Hachiman is a well-preserved old castle town in the mountains of Gifu; a town of rivers, springs and waterways. It is most famous for its 400-year old dance festival, the Gujo Odori. For 32 nights each summer, the town's old streets are packed with people dancing and singing the traditional songs, and for several of these nights, the dancing goes on till dawn. A feature of this festival is that the dancing is open to anyone - visitors are encouraged to join in, and the dances themselves are quite easy to imitate.

Mottainai - Even Tiny Scraps Can Be Reused  (03:45)
Mottainai is a traditional Japanese custom of never wasting anything that can be reused, and Kaga Yubinuki are a good example. The old region of Kaga (part of today's Ishikawa) was famous for kimonos and textile dying. In the Kaga Yuzen style of kimono, many colors of thread are used for each piece, creating large amounts of cast off short lengths of silk thread. The old seamstresses recycled the threads to make thimbles (yubinuki), and over the centuries these silk thimbles evolved into delicately patterned little pieces of folk art.

Mizuhiki - The Art of Tying Paper Cords  (03:18)
A custom that's long been part of daily life in Japan is to present gifts or offerings in an envelope decorated with a complex knot of colored cords. The 1,000-year old custom of mizuhiki symbolizes the wish that the ties binding giver to receiver will never break. Today, in addition to the traditional use, people also use mizuhiki to tie many other things, such as birthday cards, companies are developing new products using mizuhiki cords and artists are adapting the old materials and techniques to create art objects.

When Mending Becomes an Art   (03:24)
Mottainai is a traditional Japanese custom of never wasting anything that can be repaired instead. Kintsugi originated 400 years ago as a method for mending broken pottery with a lacquer resin glue, repeatedly polishing many layers of lacquer for a seamless join. Artisans decorated their repairs by adding gold dust to the lacquer, and kintsugi graduallydeveloped into an art form in which the repair actually added beauty and value. Old ceramics mended in this way can be extremely valuable, and the art itself is becoming popular again.

Old Crafts in Modern Art   (03:39)
Unique local industries developed throughout Japan based on locally created craft techniques and raw materials. Skills and techniques refined over the centuries gave Japan one of the world's most distinctive craft traditions. Today, the inheritors of such traditional skills are increasingly using them in the service of fine art, employing old craft materials like bamboo, lacquer and clay to create freshly expressive works.

Donabe - Most Versatile of Cooking Pots  (03:41)
The donabe, a type of earthenware pot used for cooking at the table, is one of the oldest and best loved Japanese kitchen utensils. Traditionally made from a special clay, a donabe retains heat even after the flame is turned off, cooking its contents gently and thoroughly. This versatile pot can be used for many different kinds of cooking, and Japanese families love to use it to prepare food at the table, serving themselves straight from the pot.

Bonsai - Nature's Beauty in Miniature  (03:42)
Bonsai artists aim to create miniature but completely convincing natural landscapes, pruning their tiny trees and training them with wire to grow into the desired shapes in a process that can take hundreds of years. It's a hobby with a huge following, and there is even an entire village of bonsai nurseries close to Tokyo. These living works of art, long popular among older Japanese, are now finding new fans in the younger generation.

Iwami Kagura - Ancient Ritual to Modern Folk Art   (04:49)
Kagura is an old tradition of dance and music that traces its roots to the most ancient of Japan's creation myths about the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. Historically performed at shrines by Shinto priests, in the 19th century it was taken up by the public and transformed into the vigorous folk art we can see today. Of all the types of kagura, the Shimane regional style known as Iwami kagura is the most lively, gorgeous and dramatically entertaining.

Carry Your Own Chopsticks  (04:11)
When eating at home, it's a Japanese custom for each family member to use their own chopsticks, rice bowl and other utensils, the familiar feel of these personal items adding to their enjoyment of the meal. That's one reason for the recent boom in carrying personal chopsticks to eat out at work or in restaurants, a boom encouraged by stores selling a wide range of chopsticks and cases in fashionable designs. The other reason is the cultural sense of mottainai - an aversion to waste that now makes people reluctant to use disposable restaurant chopsticks.

Tsukemono - The Pleasure of Japanese Pickles  (03:32)
No Japanese meal is complete without a dish of pickles, or tsukemono. Pickled with salt, vinegar, rice bran, even soy sauce - tsukemono come in a bewildering choice of varieties, colors and tastes - any combination of ingredients you can think of is bound to be pickled somewhere in Japan as a treasured regional delicacy. Originating as a way to preserve vegetables for winter eating, tsukemono retain their enormous popularity today for their health benefits and for the refreshing taste contrast they bring to a meal.

Night Festival in Chichibu  (04:20)
Huge wooden floats, fantastically decorated and hauled by chanting groups, are a feature of many Japanese festivals. One of the most spectacular is the Chichibu Night Festival, held in early December in a hilly town north of Tokyo. Taking all year to prepare and weighing up to 20 tons, the floats are pulled to the sound of drums through streets filled with festival crowds. The floats begin from Chichibu's 2,000-year-old shrine and are strenuously hauled through the sharp corners and steep inclines of the town to end at a park under a huge firework display.

Monkiri Asobi - The Art Of Papercutting  (03:59)
Monkiri asobi is a style of papercutting in which symmetrical patterns are cut with scissors in paper folded in four. Unfolded, the paper reveals the full design. This pastime, now popular again after almost disappearing, originated over 150 years ago from a technique developed by craftsmen to save time when preparing the patterns for painting mon, or family crests. Later used for many other decorative purposes, mon were created in a vast range of artistic designs that tell us much about the interests, lifestyle and world view of people centuries ago

Miyadaiku - Guardians of a Tradition of Building in Wood  (03:43)
Japan is filled with magnificent wooden structures - temples, shrines, pagodas - some over 1,000 years old, and many still in excellent condition. The craftsmen who built these enduring buildings are known as miyadaiku, and even today master carpenters continue to use and pass on the ancient skills, ensuring a future for this tradition. Miyadaiku apprentices learn their craft the old way, by directly imitating their master, and specialize in building and restoring Japan's shrines and temples with their intricate, superbly finished woodwork and gracefully curving roofs.

Sushi from Tokyo Bay Again  (04:11)
Centuries ago, under the shoguns, the people of Tokyo (then called Edo) referred to the abundant seafood they enjoyed from Tokyo Bay as Edomae. This vast bay, fed by many rivers and lined with fertile tidelands, was a plentiful source of the finest fish and shellfish that were used for Edomae zushi, the origin of the sushi that is now enjoyed worldwide. The bay's whole ecosystem came under threat from pollution and reclamation during the economic boom of the 60s and 70s, but environmental programs have now cleaned the waters and once again Tokyo can eat sushi from its bay.

Ready to Eat. Instantly, Anywhere  (03:56)
Over 100 billion instant noodle meals are now eaten worldwide each year – a huge change in our eating habits that began 50 years ago with a new technology invented in a Japanese garden shed. Flash-frying in oil to quickly dry noodles created a tasty product that was easy to cook and had a long shelf life. Today, we can choose from a vast variety of instant meals, not just noodles. They are eaten at home, at the office, and even by astronauts in space. And they have proved especially valuable as emergency food supplies for disaster zones.

Bamboo's Deep Roots in Japanese Life  (04:00)
The bamboo has been an ever-present, well-loved part of Japanese daily life and culture for centuries. You see it in house exteriors and interiors, children still play with traditional bamboo toys like stilts and tops, and it's widely eaten in season. Traditional arts like the tea ceremony feature fine accessories and utensils crafted from bamboo. It is modern too – the first electric light bulbs used Japanese bamboo filaments, and innovative new bamboo products continue to be developed, ranging from silky textiles to bamboo charcoal soaps and anti-allergy products.

Traditional Crafts, Modern Design - That's Kanazawa  (03:50)
In its golden age from the 17th to the 19th century, Kanazawa was one of Japan's greatest centers of culture and commerce. The old city retains much of its samurai era atmosphere, and its many highly-sophisticated traditional arts and crafts such as Kaga Yuzen dyeing, Kutani ceramics and fine gold leaf work continue to prosper. Today, the city is encouraging these local craft industries to apply their traditional artistic skills to modern designs, aiming to make beautiful hand-made objects, from fashion to jewelry and tableware, once again part of people's daily lives.

Compact Houses for Spacious Living  (03:58)
In 1952, architect Makoto Masuzawa started a boom in Japan for what he called the "minimum house" - very compact homes with an efficient open-plan interior that made them seem very spacious for their size. His ideas are now being revived by a group of young architects and designers calling themselves the 9-Tsubo House Project. Their popular and highly versatile designs are smaller than normal houses, allowing more of each site to be used for garden. Open interiors and large windows and doors that merge interior and exterior achieve a feeling of great spaciousness.

Learning about Life from Food  (03:17)
In the Japanese school system, food and nutrition education courses, where children learn about good diet and how to choose and make healthy food, are regarded as an important foundation for all education - intellectual, moral and physical. Many outside groups take part in these classes, from local school authorities to food manufacturers, as well as expert volunteers such as celebrity chef Kiyomi Mikuni who contribute their specialist knowledge of cooking, eating and food safety to teach young children valuable and basic lessons about life.

Fun Ways to Get Fit  (03:46)
Japanese toy and game manufacturers have made huge advances in home entertainment technology, and now they are starting to apply this knowledge for health, fitness and healing. Families enjoy exercising together in front of the TV, thanks to interactive sports games using advanced motion sensors and monitors. Walkers and runners listen to voice instructions providing expert guidance through their headphones, with music scientifically optimized for greatest aerobic benefit. And playing with lifelike robot pets is having a rejuvenating effect on the brains of many senior citizens.

Manga Goes Worldwide  (03:31)
The worldwide spread of Japan's manga sub-culture was on view again this year at the second International Manga Awards, where prizes were presented to artists from many different countries for the best manga work produced outside Japan. Many who came for the Awards went on to the International Manga Summit in Kyoto, which focused on ways to use this rapidly internationalizing art form for the benefit of society in every nation, just as it has long been used in Japan.

World's Biggest Firework   (04:03)
Summer fireworks displays have long been a Japanese custom, and Japanese fireworks are among the world's most spectacular. Among the more than one thousand fireworks displays held here every year, there is one that features the world's biggest firework. The tiny town of Katakai (pop. 6,000) has had a fireworks industry for over 400 years. They used a combination of traditional and innovative techniques to produce the 420 kg, 120 cm shell that now draws crowds of 200,000 to their annual display.

Japanese Denim - High Fashion and Eco-Friendly  (03:31)
Japanese denim, currently the favorite material for high-fashion jeans worldwide, was the theme of the Japan Blue Exhibition, part of this year's Japan Fashion Week in Tokyo. The world's fashion houses choose Japanese-made denim for a number of reasons: the excellent appearance produced by Japan's local indigo dye and traditional dyeing techniques, the leading ideas of contemporary Japanese jeans designers, and the pioneering efforts of Japanese jeans and denim companies to make the manufacturing process more eco-friendly.

Deco Art - It's Everywhere!  (03:58)
A new fashion trend is spreading from Japan to the world. It originated when nail artists discovered their clients wanted the same kind of decorations applied to cellphones and other personal objects. Driven by user demand, stores sprang up offering custom-decorated phones and the parts and tools for people to do their own decoration. This trend was quickly taken up by the world of street fashion, and a sub-culture known as "deco-art" now supports the desire of young Japanese to express their individuality by personalizing each product they wear.