Eigen-ji Temple was built in the tranquility of the Suzuka Mountains by the upper reaches of the Echi River in Higashiomi City, Shiga Prefecture. The temple has prepared a program that allows visitors to intuitively experience the original landscapes of Japan amid the rich nature of the four seasons. The video itself introduces the program, which allows visitors to experience zazen meditation, Buddhist vegetarian cuisine, the sencha tea ceremony, and Mandokoro tea, which is grown using age-old methods. At the same time, it showcases the charms of Japanese landscapes that have continued since the Nanboku-cho period (1336–1392) using the so-called aesthetics of subtraction.

Sano ramen hails from Sano City in Tochigi Prefecture. Many Sano ramen shops use a unique, traditional technique known as aotake-uchi, and overall there are more than 150 ramen shops in the city engaged in friendly competition with one another. The video uses high-speed visuals at a great tempo to show off everything from the water used to make the soup to the unique ramen production methods and visuals of the ramen being consumed.

Mt. Fuji Satoyama Vacation is an eco tour and glamping facility in a satoyama area in Fujinomiya City, Shizuoka Prefecture, based on the theme of harmony, harmony of people, and harmony of Japan. In the video, the facility’s owner speaks in English, introducing Mt. Fuji, the beautiful nearby nature and experiences, and of course the facility itself.

The KIOKE SHOYU Export FacilitationConsortium brings together different soy sauce breweries aiming to revitalize the use of wooden barrels and promote the charms of KIOKE SHOYU. This video describes the tastes generated by different bacterial ecosystems in wooden barrels, how the barrels are made, and how the Yoshino cedar trees that make these barrels are grown. It also communicates the significance of carrying forward the history and thoughts of soy sauce brewers through a dining scene featuring three generations of the same family.

The village of Totsukawa in Nara Prefecture is home to Kuchu no Mura, a treetop camping facility with treehouses and playgrounds that utilize the surrounding nature, put together by Jolan Ferreri from France. Through an interview with Ferreri, the video shows off the unique topography and environment of the area, communicating worldwide a new way of enjoying Japan’s forests.

The Nippon Foundation has installed the world’s first transparent toilets in 17 locations in Shibuya-ku in Tokyo. In the video, a Japanese and a foreign presenter describe the social background behind these toilets in English, as well as interview the project manager in English. The video shows how revolutionary Japanese product design has helped to change the way public toilets are viewed.

Tanabe City in Wakayama Prefecture, home to the Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage Routes World Heritage Site, is the birthplace of Morihei Ueshiba, founder of the martial art of aikido. Based on theme of aikido and Kumano, the video describes how new doors open for people who travel this area. It depicts locally rooted values and how they link and interact with one another. With clips of Morihei Ueshiba alongside animated scenes, the visuals highlight the special experience granted only to those who take a trip here, expressing the quintessentially Japanese spirit and culture that has been passed down through aikido and Kumano.

Komatsuya is an old tsukudani store established in 1881 in the uniquely downtown district of Yanagibashi in Tokyo. The video shows the store owner making different tsukudani dishes step by step, using eel in the spring and clams in the summer. While incorporating the unique downtown elements of Yanagibashi, the visuals introduce the seasonality of Japanese cuisine and careful Japanese workmanship.

With Sebastian Masuda as creative director, a new sushi restaurant has opened in New York that incorporates elements of the kawaii culture. In the otherworldly psychedelic space, customers can enjoy macaroon sushi and sushi in the shape of parfaits. The artistic messages and values of Masuda are on show for all to see, and the space has helped to provide a completely new dining experience for customers from across the world.

hololive English is a VTuber group that performs for the English-speaking market, and this was its first large-scale live performance overseas. It was the Japanese VTuber company’s first hosting of a live performance in the US. Also featuring members from the Japan-based hololive group and hololive Indonesia, the performance helped to communicate this new Japanese VTuber culture overseas. The 6,000 tickets for the Los Angeles venue sold out in just 10 minutes. At the same time, more than 20,000 people watched the performance live and for free on YouTube, and since then the video has recorded more than 530,000 views.

Instead of the industry standard matcha powder, this project sought to circulate the highest quality matcha tea leaves and develop a machine that could create the real aroma, flavor, and color of matcha with the push of a button. As a result, people from across the world can now easily enjoy freshly made matcha. By creating global demand for high-quality matcha, this project has created a cycle to mutually benefit producers, consumers, and the global environment.

SCRAP, developers of the globally popular escape games, have opened up new multilingual games for foreign visitors to Japan. At the Tokyo Mystery Circus in Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku, and several other stores in the city, SCRAP hosts games and events in multiple different languages for people from Asia, Europe, and the US. At its Tokyo Mystery Circus store, SCRAP has tailored its games and events to inbound tourists through signs, pamphlets, and website content in different languages, as well as by training its staff in English.

“Healthy ingredients. Just as they are.”
The Sonomono Natto series makes full use of natto, a traditional Japanese fermented food, but eliminates the unique smell, appearance, and other potentially negative factors for foreigners to give natto enhanced functionality and practicality. As people from across the world begin to learn the various health benefits of natto, this project saw the company work with locals from Kohoku Town in Saga Prefecture, where soy beans are produced, to monitor their level of intestinal activity and gauge the health benefits of the product. Alongside these research results, Sonomono Natto is working with Amazon in the US and other trade fairs to promote the product’s overseas rollout, mainly in the US.

This project aims to promote the restoration of thatched roofs that have been covered in tin in Miyama Town, Nantan City, Kyoto Prefecture, with the help of visitors from around the world. As part of the project, the company offers six thatched buildings to use as rented accommodation. The cooperative lifestyles in Japanese farming villages have laid the foundation for Japanese lifestyles of today. This project promotes participative tourism—allowing foreign visitors to participate in these lifestyles, learn about Japanese culture, and experience town development.

This new culture sees Japanese nerikiri sweets elevated into highly artistic pieces that are presented to customers in a manner akin to the Japanese tea ceremony. It has been defined as kado, a new art culture of Japan. To communicate the Japanese sweet culture in a new way, the sweets are made live in front of the customer, with careful attention paid to every movement and every detail. Kado uses the transience concept of Zen Buddhism, as both the ingredients, such as bean paste, and the final shape of the sweet are eventually consumed and disappear. It communicates the very essence of Japanese aesthetics: wabi-sabi.

Yuru instruments eliminate any obstacles that people might face in playing music, whether it be difficulty or loud noise. The instruments aim to enable anyone to instantly and easily play music. Hosting yuru music events using yuru instruments, educational workshops, and hackathons across Japan, the aim of the project is to bring the joy of musical instruments to all.