Photos were taken by iPhone and most of them are blurry because they were snapshots taken from videos. I took Nihon Buyo (Japanese traditional dance) lesson with sensu (Japanese paper fan) at Engakuji-temple (over 800 years-old temple) in Kamakura (around 1 hour by train from Tokyo). My sensei, Azuma Seika, is a renowned Japanese traditional dancer who moved ever so gracefully. I remember when I first saw her walking towards me at the entrance of the temple, I thought I was

Two weeks ago I was in Kyoto (during their biggest flood in decades; 140,000 people were evacuated and every few hours everyone's phones were beeping with warnings from the Japanese government) and took koto (Japanese harp) lessons with Sachiko-sensei. Her house is a hundred year-old traditional wooden Japanese house, just across from Nijo castle (the castle of Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the men who united Japan. This castle also was the historic place that saw the birth and t