A groundskeeper uses a bamboo broom at Kasumigaike Pond at Kenrokuen Garden in Kanazawa, Japan on January 12, 2016. The japanese garden, located next to Kanazawa Castle, encompasses over 28 acres in downtown Kanazawa. With two ponds, rolling hills with streams and bridges, is considered a strolling-style landscape garden. It's regarded as one of the top three most beautiful gardens in Japan. (Photo by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

At the end of rice harvesting season, the folks of the Kagawa and Niigata Prefectures in Japan hold a straw festival to celebrate the abundance of the harvest. Dried straws cover wooden frames to form larger-than-life sculptures from animals like sharks and gorillas to vessels such as ships and tanks. The family-friendly event invites visitors of all ages to engage, interact, and play on the enormous structures.

Creators of Mini Cooper continue on with their innovative way of promoting their product. First, it was the huge cardboard boxes, which looked like packaging for full sized Mini Coopers, left all over Amsterdam. Now they’ve hired a famous artist Alexa Meade, who is known for making 3-D objects look as if they are 2-D paintings. For this project, Alexa had to fly to Japan, where she turned a whole Mini Cooper into a “drawing”. Even if you know that what you’re seeing on the picture are 3-D objects, your brain refuses to accept this, making you think that Alexa is standing near a sloppy picture of a Mini Cooper.

A child in colorful kimono walks at Tokyo's Asakusa district on the occasion of Shichigosan celebration Thursday, October 22, 2020. The festival celebrates children aged three, five and seven for their well-being. (Photo by Eugene Hoshiko/AP Photo)

Grand champion Hakuho (front) barely defeats Daieisho on the first day of the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament at Tokyo's Ryogoku Kokugikan on March 14, 2021. (Photo by Kyodo News/Newscom/Profimedia)

Kimono-clad women from Thailand take selfies among blooming cherry blossoms at Ueno Park in Tokyo, Japan on March 27, 2021. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

Workers clad in a dog and a wild boar costumes, to represent the outgoing year of the dog and incoming year of the wild boar, clean windows on the side of a hotel in Tokyo on December 13, 2018. (Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP Photo)

In this picture taken on October 28, 2017, former Japanese p*rn star Mana Izumi checks her new tattoo at a tattoo studio in Tsurugashima, Saitama prefecture. Tattoos still provoke deep-rooted suspicion in Japan as the country prepares to host the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. People with body ink are refused entry to public swimming pools, bathing spots, beaches and often gyms, while visible body art can be harmful to job prospects. (Photo by Behrouz Mehri/AFP Photo)