Cheerleaders from the “All Japan Cheer Organization” perform in protective masks due to COVID-19, to cheer people up in front of Shimbashi Station, one day before the start of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan on July 22, 2021. (Photo by Androniki Christodoulou/Reuters)

Yuna Hiraiwa of Team Japan falls from the uneven bars during Women's Podium Training ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Ariake Gymnastics Centre on July 22, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

“Mother and Child”. Snow monkey at “Jigokudani hot-spring” in Nagano, Japan. (Photo by Kiyoshi Ookawa)

English-Albanian singer and songwriter Dua Lipa soaks up Japan in the last decade of November 2023. (Photo by Dualipa/Instagram)

A white whale wears a wreath at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium-amusement park complex in Yokohama, Japan, on October 3, 2012. (Photo by Associated Press)

A family of children share a bath in Japan, circa 1965. (Photo by Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Those lights are actually bioluminescent shrimp, better known as sea fireflies, or, in Japan, as “umibotaru”. Visible every year from May until the end of October, they live in the sand around very shallow sea water and are often seen floating between the extremes of high and low tides. Here: Bioluminescent sea fireflies glittering like diamonds on the rocks and sand. Okayama, Japan. July 2016. (Photo by Trevor Williams/Jonathan Galione/Getty Images)