Message from the Editor

Prepare yourselves to enjoy a full month of events! July and its buddy August are months of festivals that are not to be missed!

Go carry omikoshi (お神輿) to bond (even more) with your Japanese pals. Drench a few shirts with sweat during those memorable dancing parades, relax at night by lying down in the summer grass, looking up to the beautiful, hanabi-colored sky.

Mmm, sounds like lots of fun to do. Just one thing bothering me about summer though: it is so hot outside that they have to climate-control every single building. Result: I already fear those extreme changes of temperature between in and outside. I know already that I am most likely to catch a cold coming and going from and to fridges and ovens. That's my cold shower in hot and humid summer Japan. . . .

So take care of yourself, and 暑さに負けないでね (atsusa ni makenaide ne). If I reword this my own way: do not capitulate to the heat!

New articles for July 2007

• July 2007 events at a glance
• AquaWorld Ōarai - Ibaraki's world-class aquarium
• Ōarai Resort Outlets - Clothing, accessories, sporting goods, and more

Voices from the archives (recently resurrected articles from the paper Ibaraki Report)

• An exclusive interview with Maki Yōichi - The legendary Mito painter of French landscape and culture tells his story
• Fitting in at a Japanese workplace - A survival guide
• If you could change one thing in the Japanese workplace, what would it be? - Interview collection
• El Torito - Mexican food in Tsukuba
• Kagami Crystal - A famous glass workshop of Ibaraki
• Ibaraki Prefectural Braille Library - In Mito
• The Mask That Could Not Be Removed - An Ibaraki legend
• The new prefectural office - In Kasahara-chō, Mito