Look Out For The Delicious and Inexpensive Set Lunch Options in Japan

A lot of excellent restaurants in Japan offer very affordable set lunches so look out for these when you want an exquisite and filling meal but you donā€™t want to pay the high prices often associated with haute cuisine served in Japan. You could easily pay above Ā„10,000 per person in the evening for dinner at the many high-class restaurants scattered throughout Tokyo, but many restaurants with extremely good reputations also offer set lunches at a fraction of that cost at midday. For example, a traditional Japanese restaurant called Sankame (pictured below), which serves Kyoto style dishes in Tokyo and boasts a Michelin Guide one star, charges Ā„10,000 – Ā„15,000 for dinner but only Ā„1,000 to Ā„2,000 for a set lunch between 12 and 2 p.m. and itā€™s located in Ginza – an area renowned for its pricey real estate. Read a review of the Sankame restaurant in English on SunnyPages.jp. By the way, the SunnyPages.jp website is a marvellous resource for finding restaurants and choosing a great place to eat in Japan.

Sankame

Sankame Front

Guest Post with Ms. Sanja Željeznjak – Sakura (Cherry Blossoms)

Recently, I was contacted by Sanja Željeznjak (pictured below) from Croatia who told me how much she enjoyed reading my Cherry Blossom Stories Blog. Naturally, I was very grateful for her kind words and her encouragement.

In her message, Sanja asked me to take a look at her blog and I’m very pleased that I did. As you all know, I’m a big fan of the cherry blossoms in Japan so I was particularly moved by her blog post called Sakura. I asked Sanja if I could share this piece of writing with my readers and she replied she would be very happy to do this.

Optimized-Sanja Zeljeznjak

Please take the time to read Sanja’s blog piece titled Sakura below. Whether you’ve been to Japan or not, you’ll be touched by the eloquence of Sanja’s words and her understanding of the cherry blossoms and what they represent to the Japanese people. Sanja’s writing is very poetic and uplifting. I believe this blog post acts as a reminder for us all to to appreciate nature and the people in our lives and to forget the materialistic trappings which sometimes seem more important. We should treasure those people who are close to us and we should support them and hold them dear because just like the cherry blossoms which come and go so quickly, we are here on this earth for just a brief moment in time.

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SANJA’S BLOG POST ‘SAKURA’

Each year in early spring, around mid-March and up until mid-April, Japan is almost overnight transformed into the Land of the Cherry Blossom. Countless parks, promenades and boulevards are bundled up in the sheer whiteness of sakura. During that time, the whole country follows with excitement the cherry blossom forecasts all over Japan from the deep south to the upper north. No matter what, almost everyone will try to find at least one spare moment for hanami, or cherry blossom viewing.

Can a foreigner understand the feeling of profound happiness that permeates a Japanese person sitting on a bench alone or with his friends while gazing at a blooming cherry tree?

Optimized-Cherry Blossom for Sanja
Sakura (ę”œ, Japanese: cherry blossoms) warms the soul of every inhabitant who has an eye for its momentary beauty. It’s well known that the lifetime of a cherry blossom is dramatically short, only about one week. As soon as the delicate pink and white blossoms open up on the still, bare branches, a gust of spring wind blows past and shakes the petals. It won’t be long before the petals, fragile as they are, fly off in their first and final flight to the ground, greeted by the most beautiful, cold embrace of death: expressed with the upmost beauty and dignity.

As beauty is so short and transient, she is dear to the human eye. The cheerful soul of the beholder relishes the view of the petals swaying in the air and falling down to the ground, silently like pink rain. We stop for an instant, fascinated by that magical moment of the perfect Japanese spring which has been immortalised in countless movies and in numerous photographs.

We look at the sakura, afraid to say out loud how we instinctively feel and what saddens us deeply: that our life itself is like a cherry blossom. At any moment in our brief lives, we could be mowed down by something insignificant, such as a gust of wind. So let us enjoy every single day while we are still here.

Happiness is in grief, in the dramatic anticipation of the end that must come. The majestic life of the Queen Sakura ends up under the feet of the casual passers-by, who themselves are mere random strollers in this corner of the universe.

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Thank you Sanja for allowing me to share your blog post Sakura. I really appreciate it and I’m sure my readers will agree, you’ve really captured the spirit and significance of the cherry blossoms in Japan. Visit Sanja’s blog called Japanese Bugs.

Sanja Sakura

Meet Ms. Yoshimi Ohtani – Illustrator Extraordinaire

I’d like to introduce you to the renowned Japanese Illustrator Yoshimi Ohtani from ARTas1. I’m very lucky and truly honoured to present Yoshimi Ohtani’s illustrations on the cover and throughout my latest book Tokyo Tales: A Collection of Japanese Short Stories.

Picture of Yoshimi-san

Yoshimi Ohtani was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1980. In 2005, a great desire for creation came over her, and so she began illustrating and refined her passion, establishing a new style for her work using illustrator software. In the Spring of 2008, she asked herself “what do I want to create?” This thrust her toward focusing her craft even further and she decided to launch a website joining the words “fun-” and “-arium”… “Funarium” and she began to focus on fine art exhibitions. “I draw my scenes with an emphasis on ‘fun’ while creating eye-catching girls who embody the essences of both Japanese and Western style and “Goth-Loli” fashion.”

Yoshimi Ohtani’s creations combine a traditional mindset (iki) with a sense of modern Japanesque “passive demeanor” (wabi), an “elegant simplicity” (sabi), and a “classic taste” (kare). The results give fascinating characters that are a hybrid of Japanimation/manga-comics and design/artistic expression. Today, Ohtani’s works can be found in book cover designs, interiors of restaurants/bars, magazines, in video game music videos, cell phone icons and cases, and more.

If you’d like to work with Ms. Yoshimi Ohtani and purchase her stunning illustrations for your own project please visit her page on the ARTas1 website.

Below is one example of the many wonderful illustrations by Yoshimi Ohtani you’ll discover inside Tokyo Tales: A Collection of Japanese Short Stories. This image truly complements the first story, entitled My Cute Kawaii Boutique, which tells the tale of a young girl called Kimiko-san who is embarking on her own journey of self discovery. Kimiko-san is determined to unleash her individualism and personal creativity when she begins working as a sales assistant at a popular Harajuku boutique.

My Cute Kawaii Boutique picture

The “Kawaii” culture has become a global phenomenon. Young girls all over the world are experimenting with imaginative Harajuku styles. So if you love the Lolita, Gyaru, Ganguro, Gothic Lolita and Fairy Kei styles then this story will definitely appeal to you. If you’re seeing these Japanese street trends for the first time, allow me to introduce you to a whole new world where you may just feel like Alice in Wonderland and you’re at risk of falling down the infamous rabbit hole to a place you would never have imagined could exist until now.

There are fifteen short stories in total inside Tokyo Tales: A Collection of Japanese Short Stories for you to enjoy and many more illustrations by Yoshimi Ohtani for you to appreciate. Visit Amazon.com to get your very own copy of the eBook on Amazon today.