BentoA bento is the Japanese iteration of a single-portion take-out or home-packed meal, often for lunch. Outside Japan, it is common in other East and Southeast Asian culinary styles, especially within Chinese, Korean, Singaporean, Taiwanese cuisines and more, as rice is a common staple food in the region. The term bento is derived from the Chinese term biandang (, ), which means "convenient" or "convenience". A traditional bento may contain rice or noodles with fish or meat, often with pickled and cooked vegetables in a box.
Hinamatsuri, also called Doll's Day or Girls' Day, is a religious (Shinto) holiday in Japan, celebrated on 3 March of each year. Platforms covered with a red carpet–material are used to display a set of ornamental dolls representing the Emperor, Empress, attendants, and musicians in traditional court dress of the Heian period. Hinamatsuri is one of the five seasonal festivals that are held on auspicious dates of the Chinese calendar: the first day of the first month, the third day of the third month, and so on.
Chinese New YearChinese New Year is the festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. In Chinese, the festival is commonly referred to as the Spring Festival () as the spring season in the lunisolar calendar traditionally starts with lichun, the first of the twenty-four solar terms which the festival celebrates around the time of the Chinese New Year. Marking the end of winter and the beginning of the spring season, observances traditionally take place from Chinese New Year's Eve, the evening preceding the first day of the year, to the Lantern Festival, held on the 15th day of the year.
Cherry blossomA cherry blossom, also known as a Japanese cherry or sakura, is a flower of trees in the genus Prunus or the Prunus subgenus Cerasus. Wild species of the cherry tree are widely distributed, mainly in the Northern Hemisphere. They are common in East Asia, especially in Japan. They generally refer to ornamental cherry trees, not cherry trees grown for their fruit. The cherry blossom is considered the national flower of Japan.
KigoA kigo is a word or phrase associated with a particular season, used in traditional forms of Japanese poetry. Kigo are used in the collaborative linked-verse forms renga and renku, as well as in haiku, to indicate the season referred to in the stanza. They are valuable in providing economy of expression. Although the term kigo was coined as late as 1908, representation of, and reference to, the seasons has long been important in Japanese culture and poetry.
Japanese poetryJapanese poetry is poetry typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, as well as poetry in Japan which was written in the Chinese language or ryūka from the Okinawa Islands: it is possible to make a more accurate distinction between Japanese poetry written in Japan or by Japanese people in other languages versus that written in the Japanese language by speaking of Japanese-language p
List of kigoThis is a list of kigo, which are words or phrases that are associated with a particular season in Japanese poetry. They provide an economy of expression that is especially valuable in the very short haiku, as well as the longer linked-verse forms renku and renga, to indicate the season referenced in the poem or stanza. Until 1873, in the Japanese calendar, seasons traditionally followed the lunisolar calendar with the solstices and equinoxes at the middle of a season.
BambooBamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in the case of Dendrocalamus sinicus individual culms reaching a length of 46 meters, up to 36 centimeters in thickness and a weight of up to 450 kilograms. The internodes of bamboos can also be of great length. Kinabaluchloa wrayi has internodes up to 2.5 meters in length.
ChrysanthemumChrysanthemums (krɪˈsænθəməm), sometimes called mums or chrysanths, are flowering plants of the genus Chrysanthemum in the family Asteraceae. They are native to East Asia and northeastern Europe. Most species originate from East Asia and the center of diversity is in China. Countless horticultural varieties and cultivars exist. The genus Chrysanthemum are perennial herbaceous flowering plants, sometimes subshrubs. The leaves are alternate, divided into leaflets and may be pinnatisect, lobed, or serrate (toothed) but rarely entire; they are connected to stalks with hairy bases.
East AsiaEast Asia is the easternmost region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. Hong Kong and Macau, two small coastal quasi-dependent territories located in the south of China, are officially highly autonomous but are under Chinese sovereignty. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau are some of the world's largest and most prosperous economies.
