The Sakura Obsession

Author: Naoko Abe
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525519904
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
Each year, the flowering of cherry blossoms marks the beginning of spring. But if it weren’t for the pioneering work of an English eccentric, Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram, Japan’s beloved cherry blossoms could have gone extinct. Ingram first fell in love with the sakura, or cherry tree, when he visited Japan on his honeymoon in 1907 and was so taken with the plant that he brought back hundreds of cuttings with him to England. Years later, upon learning that the Great White Cherry had virtually disappeared from Japan, he buried a living cutting from his own collection in a potato and repatriated it via the Trans-Siberian Express. In the years that followed, Ingram sent more than 100 varieties of cherry tree to new homes around the globe. As much a history of the cherry blossom in Japan as it is the story of one remarkable man, The Sakura Obsession follows the flower from its significance as a symbol of the imperial court, through the dark days of the Second World War, and up to the present-day worldwide fascination with this iconic blossom.

Girl Reading Girl in Japan

Author: Tomoko Aoyama
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135247951
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Girl Reading Girl provides the first overview of the cultural significance of girls and reading in modern and contemporary Japan with emphasis on the processes involved when girls read about other girls. The collection examines the reading practices of real life girls from differing social backgrounds throughout the twentieth century while a number of chapters also consider how fictional girls read attention is given to the diverse cultural representations of the girl, or shôjo, who are the objects of the reading desires of Japan’s real life and fictional girls. These representations appear in various genres, including prose fiction, such as Yoshiya Nobuko’s Flower Stories and Takemoto Nobara’s Kamikaze Girls, and manga, such as Yoshida Akimi’s The Cherry Orchard. This volume presents the work of pioneering women scholars in the field of girl studies including translations of a ground-breaking essay by Honda Masuko on reading girls and Kawasaki Kenko’s response to prejudicial masculine critiques of best-selling novelist, Yoshimoto Banana. Other topics range from the reception of Anne of Green Gables in Japan to girls who write and read male homoerotic narratives.

Coffee Obsession

Author: DK
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1465434763
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
More than 150 million Americans drink coffee each day. We're not the only nation obsessed: More than 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the world each day. In Coffee Obsession, we take a journey through the coffee-producing nations around the world, presenting the different styles, flavors, and techniques used to brew the perfect cup. We explore how coffee gets from bean to cup in each region, and what that means for the final product. Through clear step-by-step instruction, Coffee Obsession will teach you how to make latte, cappuccino, and other iconic coffee styles as if you were a professionally trained barista. With more than 130 classic coffee recipes to suit every taste, detailed flavor profiles and tasting notes, as well as recommended roasts from around the world, Coffee Obsession is like nothing else out on the market.

There a Petal Silently Falls

Author: Yun Ch'oe
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023114296X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
At once experimental, polyvocal, and politically engaged, the stories collected in There a Petal Silently Falls offer a rich, evocative exploration of violence, trauma, and loss in divided Korea. Ch'oe's stories take us well beyond previous literary representations of national division and the 1980 Kwangju Massacre by probing the relationship among desire, fantasy, and memory, all the while locating gender at the center of the making of history.

Kafka on the Shore

Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400079276
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and one of the world’s greatest storytellers comes "an insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (The New Yorker) about a teenager on the run and an aging simpleton. Now with a new introduction by the author. Here we meet 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey. “As powerful as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.... Reading Murakami ... is a striking experience in consciousness expansion.” —The Chicago Tribune

Land to Water Yoga

Author: Sondra Fraleigh
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595909329
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Book Description
Learn the five steps of land to water yoga: Standing and walking Kneeling and crawling Sitting Front lying Side lying and back floating While spending two months meditating and practicing yoga in silence at Sri Aurobindos first ashram in Baroda India, Sondra Fraleigh received her first inspirations about yoga based upon infant movement development and somatic principles. She consciously utilized this element in her creative use of yogabridging it with somatic movement education and intrinsic dancing. This unique new form of yogaLand to Water Yogamaintains yogas original intent of spiritual healing and awareness and offers a way to deepen clear seeing and a calm mind, urging one past his or her limited ego. It is based on five stages of infant development and the methods of Shin Somatics Moving Way. Its progression moves backward from the most complex movement in terms of balance to the least: from walking to floating (from land to water), providing the opportunity to retrace our personal human development back to its watery soma source. Progressing through these five primary stages may elicit surprising infant and childhood memories, which can heal trauma when one lets go of buried feelings. Peeling away social constructions via this innovative form of yoga, one can learn through curiosity and build skill with ease.

Japan's High Schools

Author: Thomas P. Rohlen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520341309
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Book Description
". . . Rohlen's book achieves exciting conjectural stances while providing us with rich and trustworthy substantive data and description. His treatment of schools as 'moral communities,' his call for new, culturally sensitive definitions of moral and creative goals in children's education, his interest in the consensus between parent, school, and society which underlies effective schooling are reason alone why this book should be read by anyone interested in the context and future of any educational system ... A splendid book for non-specialists, as well as for policymakers ... " --Merry T. White, The Review of Education "Rohlen uses education as the entering wedge for a good understanding of Japanese society in general. That the author was sensitive to and appreciative of Japanese ways is evident throughout." --Eloise Lee Leiterman, Christian Science Monitor "Never have I encountered a work on modem Japan which so skillfully captures what is intrinsically unique about the society. Indeed, Rohlen proves that comparative education need not be a litany of lifeless facts." --Linda Joffe, London Times Educational Supplement "On the basis of fourteen months of fieldwork in five Japanese high schools, the author integrates observation of the schools themselves with discussion of their relationships to higher education and society at large. . . . Rowen's conclusions offer insightful contributions to the current debate on secondary education in the United States." --Harvard Educational Review "The best introduction for many a year into the cultural mainsprings of Japanese society, the principles of its organization, and the way its citizens think and feel." --Ronald P. Dore, Journal of Japanese Studies This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983. ". . . Rohlen's book achieves exciting conjectural stances while providing us with rich and trustworthy substantive data and description. His treatment of schools as 'moral communities,' his call for new, culturally sensitive definitions of moral and crea

This Japanese Life.

Author: Eryk Salvaggio
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781489596987
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description
Most books about Japan will tell you how to use chopsticks and say "konnichiwa!" Few honestly tackle the existential angst of living in a radically foreign culture. The author, a three-year resident and researcher of Japan, tackles the thousand tiny uncertainties of living abroad. -- Adapted from back cover

Cherry' Ingram

Author: Naoko Abe
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9781784706920
Category : Botanists
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
This translation simultaneously published as "The sakura obsession: the incredible story of the plant hunter who saved Japan's cherry blossoms" in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

Eliza Scidmore

Author: Diana P. Parsell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192889990
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 447

Book Description
'A wonderful connecting of two women writers' stories more than a century apart.' Julia Kuehn, The University of Hong Kong The first-ever biography of the pioneering female journalist who fought to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington, DC Every age has strong, independent women who defy the gender conventions of their era to follow their hearts and minds. Eliza Scidmore was one such maverick. Born on the American frontier just before the Civil War, she rose from modest beginnings to become a journalist who roamed far and wide writing about distant places for readers back home. By her mid-20s she had visited more places than most people would see in a lifetime. By the end of the nineteenth century, her travels were so legendary she was introduced at a meeting in London as “Miss Scidmore, of everywhere.” In what has become her best-known legacy, Scidmore carried home from Japan a big idea that helped shape the face of modern Washington: she urged the city's park officials to plant Japanese cherry trees on a reclaimed mud bank-today's Potomac Park. Though they rebuffed her suggestion several times, she finally got her way nearly three decades later thanks to the support of First Lady Helen Taft. Scidmore was a “Forrest Gump” of her day who bore witness to many important events and rubbed elbows with famous people, from John Muir and Alexander Graham Bell to U.S presidents and Japanese leaders. She helped popularize Alaska tourism during the birth of the cruise industry, and educated readers about Japan and other places in the Far East at a time of expanding U.S. interests across the Pacific. At the early National Geographic, she made a lasting mark as the first woman to serve on its board and to publish photographs in the magazine. Around the same time, she also played an activist role in the burgeoning U.S. conservation movement. Her published work includes books on Alaska, Japan, Java, China, and India; a novel based on the Russo-Japanese War; and about 800 articles in U.S. newspapers and magazines. Deeply researched and briskly written, this first-ever biography of Scidmore draws heavily on her own writings to follow major events of a half-century as seen through the eyes of a remarkable woman who was far ahead of her time.