Japanese industrial exposition posters dating from around 1920 to 1940.

The Japanese capsule hotel concept, where guests literally sleep in a space about the size of a single bed, has been given a classy make-over by Cubic Corp, who have recently opened a new style capsule hotel called 9 Hours.

Some artistic and creative examples of barcode design by the aptly named Japanese design agency Design Barcode.

A sobering Big Picture photo collection of Hiroshima, Japan, featuring images taken shortly before, and soon after, the US dropped the atomic bomb on the city in 1945.
Targeted for military reasons and for its terrain (flat for easier assessment of the aftermath), Hiroshima was home to approximately 250,000 people at the time of the bombing.

A collection of photos taken in Japan from about 1860 until the 1930s.
Shows photos of Japan between the 1860s and 1930s. In 1854, Japan opened its doors to the outside world for the first time in more than 200 years. It set in motion a truly astounding transformation. As fate would have it, photography had [...]

I know a lot of people will Google a company or website name to reach it so they don’t have to type out the URL, but how about people who use one search engine to find another, as they do in Japan?
When hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Japanese Internet users want to Google something [...]

Following on from last week’s mention of Lang Leav’s study of Japanese underground fashion, Cosplaying Lolita, everything you wanted to know about Japanese cosplaying, or costume playing, but were afraid to ask.
Cosplay – short for “costume play” – is a popular pastime for anime and gamer geeks in Japan, who express their fandom by [...]

Australian fashion designer Lang Leav has written a fascinating account of her recent journey to Tokyo to study the Japanese underground fashion scene, and seek out market leads for her Akina label, as part of the Churchill Fellowship.
I arrive in Japan in the midst of the harsh July summer at my share house in Nishi-Kawaguchi, [...]

For a minute I thought these “super toilets” could only be found in six-star hotels, but in Japan they are apparently a little more commonplace. While they sound like fun, these “always on” toilets are starting to take their toll on the environment though.
Japanese toilets are super-bidets. As well as warming and washing one’s bottom, [...]

The 2005 movie Memoirs of a Geisha, and the recent rise of the “cyber-geisha”, are behind a renewed interest in pursuing a career as the traditional dancer and entertainer, among young Japanese women
Experts believe the recent surge in teenage girls hoping to enter the “floating world” of tea ceremonies, performing arts, and yes, flirtatious [...]