Yamagata
We went looking for an anime connection, and found a whole bunch of new reasons to love this Yamagata onsen town.
Yamagata dialect can be very different from the Japanese you learned in school, but this illustrated guide will have people telling you “Jondagodo!” in no time.
Mayor of second-place city expresses regret at not capturing the title of Japan’s biggest ramen-spenders.
If this steel-swinging senior was in an anime, we know what his ultimate move would look like.
This “Festival of Tohoku Bonds” continues to pay homage to six of northern Japan’s most important annual festivals all at one time and one place.
Ethereally romantic images remind us why a wintertime visit to a snow-covered onsen resort is extra special.
We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again: cats rule the world. Maybe that even includes the spiritual world?
Snow White and the Wicked Queen cosplay is now complete with this specially grown black “poison apple”.
Japan likes to think of the food it produces as being the highest-quality in the world, and that goes double for rice. As such, many bags of domestically grown rice are decorated with iconic Japanese imagery, such as a crane, the rising sun, or Mt. Fuji.
But in today’s modern age, there’s no surer visual shorthand for Japan than cute anime girls, which is exactly what you’ll find on these bags of rice from Yamagata Prefecture.







































































