How a White Lie Gave Japan KFC for Christmas
This year, millions of people across Japan will celebrate Christmas around buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken. There was never a reason to doubt the company’s account, until the man who brought K…
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Browse articles from www.atlasobscura.com in the Akihabara archive.
The Japanese Ghost Town Buried Deep in a Canadian Forest
Japanese bowls found at the site. With racism against Japanese Canadians on the rise, says Muckle, the village’s remote location may have provided inhabitants with a sense of security. It w…
These Cheeky Statuettes Were Part of Edo-Era Japan’s Answer to Pockets
“It’s like a fob or a toggle, a giant button,” says Robert Mintz, deputy director of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and a scholar of Japanese art. When shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu ascended to …
How Killer Rice Crippled Tokyo and the Japanese Navy
In 1877, Japan's Meiji emperor watched his aunt, the princess Kazu, die of a common malady: kakke. If her condition was typical, her legs would have swollen, and her speech slowed. Numbness and …
How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
I am very happy to share this article because it talks about Toyama - the prefecture where my parents in law live and where I have been many times. Mt. Tateyama rises 9,892 feet in Japan’s …