A woman takes pictures with the Kawazu cherry blossom trees, one of the earliest blooming cherry blossoms in Japan, in Tokyo's Sumida district on March 11, 2024. (Photo by Philip Fong/AFP Photo)
Hideki Tokoro, president of whaling company Kyodo Senpaku, boards Japan's new whaling mothership, the Kangei Maru, following the ship's launch ceremony at a port in Shimonoseki city, Yamaguchi prefecture on May 21, 2024. The nearly 9,300-tonne ship set sail on its maiden hunting voyage on May 21, heralding a new era for the controversial practice defended by the government as an integral part of national culture. (Photo by Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP Photo)
A participant wearing a costume and make-up attends a Halloween parade at Walibi park in Wavre, Belgium, October 25, 2019. (Photo by Yves Herman/Reuters)
Two office workers wearing summer kimonos Yukata look at paper lanterns as they visit on the eve of Mitama Matsuri, a summer festival at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Japan, 13 July 2015. About 300,000 people visit the shrine decorated with about 30,000 lanterns during the three-day summer festival aiming at comforting souls of dead, especially for the war dead. The festival is after Japan's Buddhist custom to honor and comfort souls of family's ancestors. (Photo by Kimimasa Mayama/EPA)
A woman wearing a kimono performs an uchimizu ritual outside a pachinko game parlor in Tokyo June 30, 2015. The splashing of water onto the hot asphalt in summer is an old Japanese tradition meant to cool down the air as the water evaporates. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)
Rubber masks depicting U.S. President-elect Donald Trump are seen at the Ogawa Studios, a mask making company, in Saitama, Japan, November 21, 2016. (Photo by Toru Hanai/Reuters)
Hunter Chiaki Kodama guts a deer in a shed in Oi, Fukui Prefecture, Japan, November 17, 2016. A small but growing number of Japanese women enter the male-dominated world of hunting, where it was once taboo for men to even speak to a woman before going on a hunt. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)