Written by Japanologist Natalie Leon, this beautiful guide unlocks the secrets of Japan's seasonal culture to help you relish the seasons wherever you are. Relish every day with the secrets of Japan’s seasonal culture In traditional Japanese culture, people eat, sleep and wear the seasons, from kimono motifs to petal-shaped sweets, and festivals dedicated to nature’s spectacular displays. This mindful celebration of nature leads to a deep awareness of the seasons, called kisetsukan. This book reveals the hidden depths of kisetsukan, and how its concepts can transform your life. Discover: Shun, eating what is fresh and bountiful. Preserve edible flowers to use in homemade sweets, or taste the spring with “seven herb” porridge. Mottainai, zero-waste living. Learn about boro boro, visible mending that honours the history of a cherished garment, or wrap gifts in sustainable, seasonal fabrics. Kadō, the Way of Flowers. Learn the rules of ikebana and arrange flowers according to the seasons, or throw a cherry blossom-viewing party. Momijigari, the ritual of leaf hunting. Explore local nature with “forest bathing”, or learn simple ways to bring the outside inside. This treasure trove of folktales, recipes and activities is an invitation to celebrate each day, for increased creativity, harmony and happiness.

This beautiful and practical guide to ukeireru, the Japanese principle of acceptance, offers a path to well-being and satisfaction for the anxious and exhausted. Looking for greater peace and satisfaction? Look no further than the Japanese concept of ukeireru, or acceptance. Psychologist Scott Haas offers an elegant, practical, and life-changing look at ways we can reduce anxiety and stress and increase overall well-being. By learning and practicing ukeireru, you can: Profoundly improve your relationships, with a greater focus on listening, finding commonalities, and intuiting Find calm in ritualizing things such as making coffee, drinking tea, and even having a cocktail Embrace the importance of baths and naps Show respect for self and others, which has a remarkably calming effect on everyone Learn to listen more than you talk Tidy up your life by downsizing experiences and relationships that offer more stress than solace Cultivate practical ways of dealing with anger, fear, and arguments -- the daily tensions that take up so much of our lives By practicing acceptance, we learn to pause, take in the situation, and then deciding on a course of action that reframes things. Why Be Happy? Discover a place of contentment and peace in this harried world.

This beautiful volume shows you how you can introduce the wisdom of Japan into your own life. Including tips on mindfulness, finding contentment and doing more with less, it will be your guide to the land of the rising sun, and help you to live a rich, joyful and thoughtful life.

Japanese philosophy Ikigai is the meaning of life or some important good reason that causes a person to wake up in the morning, and the discovery of which brings satisfaction and gives more significance and fullness of human life. Many people look for a reason to get up in the morning, but few people understand that it is necessary to look inside your soul, listening to your inner voice, and not to succumb to the opinion of others. The finding your ikigai is a fundamentally important task for everyone who seeks to live a long, happy life filled with meaning, and not just to exist in our difficult world. If a person has found his destination, his life is filled with joy, energy and harmony, and its quality and duration will increase. My book is a great guide that can make you happy person. Today you will learn how to cope with stress, understand that it is important to do business that brings you pleasure, you realize that makes you vulnerable, you look differently at your work and hobbies, you will see the beauty that you have not noticed before, and feel the joy of every day of your life. Opening the main business of your life will require a significant investment of your time and energy. You will have to make a meaningful and important decision. Unfortunately, many people understand its necessity too late. The sooner you start searching for your ikigai, the sooner you will feel calm and satisfaction from your life. It is never too late to start looking for ikigai! However, the earlier you start searching, the more chances you have to find the right direction that will easily replace motivating trainings and unsuccessful attempts to force yourself to love what you do not like. Such search need a lot of work, energy and awareness. Please be patient! The search can take years and the most important thing in it is to keep looking for your ikigai. In addition, my book will teach you to be happy and live every day with joy and enthusiasm. It will help you improve your health, establish relationships with people at work and at home, you can live in harmony with yourself. This is a great guide to improve the quality of your life. It is a simple, concise and understandable book based on an ancient Japanese concept. I am sure that my book and Japanese philosophy will help you find your ikigai and make you a happy person.

Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media—from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremonies, flower arrangements, and annual observances. In Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery. Refuting the belief that this tradition reflects Japan's agrarian origins and supposedly mild climate, Shirane traces the establishment of seasonal topics to the poetry composed by the urban nobility in the eighth century. After becoming highly codified and influencing visual arts in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seasonal topics and their cultural associations evolved and spread to other genres, eventually settling in the popular culture of the early modern period. Contrasted with the elegant images of nature derived from court poetry was the agrarian view of nature based on rural life. The two landscapes began to intersect in the medieval period, creating a complex, layered web of competing associations. Shirane discusses a wide array of representations of nature and the four seasons in many genres, originating in both the urban and rural perspective: textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of "secondary nature," which flourished in Japan's urban architecture and gardens, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment it was disappearing. Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane clarifies the use of natural images and seasonal topics and the changes in their cultural associations and function across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this fascinating book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world.