Japan

Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 2

Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 2

History / 3 minutes of reading / / By

Narrow Escapes of World War II episode 2: In the wake of the humiliation of Pearl harbour, Colonel Jimmy Doolittle was asked to mount an astonishing raid. For the first time ever, bombers would be put onto aircraft carriers and shipped over near Japan. They would then hit Tokyo. The trouble was, the bombers couldn’t land on the aircraft carriers. Instead, the crews had to fly to China and then bail out. Many ditched in the sea. Others met up with resistance fighters and then tried to evade the Japanese. Several were captured. This film has exceptional footage of the […]

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Joanna Lumley's Japan episode 3

Joanna Lumley’s Japan episode 3

Travel / 4 minutes of reading / / By

Joanna Lumley’s Japan episode 3: The actress heads to the island of Shikoku hoping to gain a better understanding of Japanese Buddhism. She then takes a bullet train to another island – Kyushu – where she finds the Henn Na Hotel, the world’s first robot hotel. At Nagasaki, she visits Shiroyama Elementary school, one of the only buildings to survive the atomic bomb dropped on the city in 1945. Joanna then travels to Sakurajima, one of the country’s most active volcanoes, before heading to the islands of Okinawa where one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War was

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Joanna Lumley’s Japan episode 2

Joanna Lumley’s Japan episode 2

Travel / 4 minutes of reading / / By

Joanna Lumley’s Japan episode 2: The actress flies over Tokyo in a helicopter. The city was bombed extensively during the Second World War, so almost all of it is a symbol of the post-war economic boom that saw Japan become the world’s second largest economy. While in the capital, Joanna heads out to a nightclub to see a Japanese girl band and witnesses the largely male audience perform almost as much as the artists on stage. Later, Joanna travels to the Kiso Valley to walk the Nakasendo Way, an ancient route that once linked Tokyo to Kyoto, a place best

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Joanna Lumley's Japan episode 1

Joanna Lumley’s Japan episode 1

Travel / 5 minutes of reading / / By

Joanna Lumley’s Japan episode 1: Joanna begins a 2,000-mile journey across Japan in Hokkaido, where she meets one of the most important animals in Japanese culture, the red-crowned crane. She arrives in Sapporo during the middle of the annual Snow Festival and meets members of the local indigenous community, before travelling into the Fukushima exclusion zone and taking a bullet train from Nagano to Tokyo.         Featuring the much loved Joanna Lumley, the series will follow her as she travels to the far reaches of Japan, from the icy Siberian seas of the north to the subtropical

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Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 3

Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 3

Cooking Show / 3 minutes of reading / / By

Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 3: Paul Hollywood’s culinary journey across Japan concludes as he enters a noodle-eating challenge, dines with the largest-ever sumo and goes on an ‘eat-till-you-drop’ tour in Osaka.       Paul Hollywood goes on a culinary and cultural road trip across Japan, exploring the extraordinary country through its food and unique eating experiences. Master baker and The Great British Bake Off (2010) judge Paul Hollywood takes a culinary tour of Japan, a country he has never visited before, to learn about Japanese food culture.   Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 3   Paul Hollywood The

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Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 2

Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 2

Cooking Show / 3 minutes of reading / / By

Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 2: Paul Hollywood continues his culinary journey across Japan. He boards the bullet train, visits Okinawa and gets a cookery lesson from an atomic bomb survivor in Hiroshima.       Paul Hollywood goes on a culinary and cultural road trip across Japan, exploring the extraordinary country through its food and unique eating experiences. Master baker and The Great British Bake Off (2010) judge Paul Hollywood takes a culinary tour of Japan, a country he has never visited before, to learn about Japanese food culture.   Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 2   Paul Hollywood

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Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 1

Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 1

Cooking Show / 3 minutes of reading / / By

Paul Hollywood Eats Japan episode 1: Paul Hollywood begins his culinary and cultural road trip across Japan in Tokyo, where he experiences solo dining and karaoke, and goes on a karting tour dressed as a ninja turtle. From Tokyo to Okinawa, Osaka and more, the British baking superstar eats his way across Japan on his first-ever visit to the culinary mecca.       Paul Hollywood goes on a culinary and cultural road trip across Japan, exploring the extraordinary country through its food and unique eating experiences. Master baker and The Great British Bake Off (2010) judge Paul Hollywood takes

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The Art of Japanese Life episode 3 - Home

The Art of Japanese Life episode 3 – Home

Art / 2 minutes of reading / / By

The Art of Japanese Life episode 3 – Home: In the final episode, Dr James Fox explores the art of the Japanese home. The clean minimalism of the Japanese home has been exported around the world, from modernist architecture to lifestyle stores like Muji. But the origins of this ubiquitous aesthetic evolved from a system of spiritual and philosophical values, dating back centuries.     James visits one of Japan’s last surviving traditional wooden villages, and the 17th-century villa of Rinshunkaku, and reveals how the unique spirit of Japanese craftsmen (shokunin) turned joinery into an artform – creating houses without

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The Art of Japanese Life episode 2 - Cities

The Art of Japanese Life episode 2 – Cities

Art / 3 minutes of reading / / By

The Art of Japanese Life episode 2 – Cities: Dr James Fox explores how the artistic life of three great Japanese cities shaped the country’s attitudes to past and present, east and west, and helped forge the very idea of Japan itself.     Beginning in Kyoto, the country’s capital for almost a thousand years, James reveals how the flowering of classical culture produced many great treasures of Japanese art, including The Tale of Genji, considered to be the first novel ever written. In the city of Edo, where Tokyo now stands, a very different art form emerged, in the

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The Art of Japanese Life episode 1 - Nature

The Art of Japanese Life episode 1 – Nature

Art / 3 minutes of reading / / By

The Art of Japanese Life episode 1 – Nature: Dr James Fox journeys through Japan’s mountainous forests, marvels at its zen gardens and admires centuries-old bonsai, to explore the connections between Japanese culture and the natural environment.     Travelling around Japan’s stunning island geography, he examines how the country’s two great religions, Shinto and Buddhism, helped shape a creative response to nature often very different to the West. But he also considers modern Japan’s changing relationship to the natural world and travels to Naoshima Art Island to see how contemporary artists are finding new ways to engage with nature.

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Daitoku-ji, Japan

Gardens Near and Far episode 8 – Daitoku-ji, Japan

Gardens Near and Far / 2 minutes of reading / / By

Gardens Near and Far episode 8 – Daitoku-ji, Japan: silence, minimalism and symbolic meaning reign in the Japanese Zen garden. Stone lanterns, purifying basins and white rocks and pebbles are meticulously designed and laid out.     The monastery of Daitoku-ji consists of a main temple surrounded by 23 sub-temples, separated from the city by an encircling wall. It is entered via one of three great portals. Its dry gardens embody the principles of Zen abstract philosophy: colour, plants and minerals are kept to a minimum. The paths take one on a journey in which the body is cleansed prior

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